October 3, 2021Moon’s End
Maybe the moon should go.
I’ll stay up late to see it finally,
What? Break off like a lemon
Yanked from a branch, detach
Like a plug from a plug.
Maybe it’ll just fade away,
Pretending that it was never
Dependent on anyone else’s pull.
Don’t look at me like that!
I’m no fool. I know that wishing it
Away is the same as wishing
For my own end. The tides
Rolling me out toward the dark,
A castaway from existence.
I don’t understand the mathematics
Of its retreat, how the lasers
Read its distance, catch it on
The lies the moon tells our eyes,
It’s trick of romance. No dance,
Only the threat of loneliness.
What they say is true, the historians,
Imagine all that it has witnessed
Over the eons? Caesar’s collapse,
The powdered eruption of Towers,
Pinprick messiah hung, revolutions,
And finally the glint that floated
Down to its flank, settling spider-like
On a plain. When it goes, it goes
Ever outward, toward a space
That cannot resolve itself, the end
Of a love affair, a marriage
Between the living and the dead.
from Poets Respond