1. new moon
traffic
looks stalled under the Fremont Bridge arch
but
it’s far off through rain & the train window
black
river’s a one-way mirror for the sky
where
the moon must float, absorbing gray moisture
2. waxing crescent
the
sky’s undecided--half hour after
blue,
half hour before black--but the train might
arrive
on schedule under gold station lights:
the
crescent’s blurred above angled power lines
3. half moon
cattails
& vetch thrive at the parking lot’s edge
where
this late afternoon blends shadow & sun—
the
yellow clapboard walls align slanted light,
but
not slanted light off the divided moon
4. waxing gibbous
streetlight
photons cut across the avenue,
glimmer
between the birch leaves, an electric
nest;
here come the headlights, flying two by two:
moon’s
belly swells ripe in an unpeopled sky
5. full moon
the
taijitu sign glows black & white against
a
stucco building; people are driving home,
lights
approaching from all dimensions; how can
this
moon be both a mirror & an orphan
Jack Hayes
© 2017
This completes the
yearlong cycle of moon quatrains, & also officially signals the completion
of the Sunflower Sky manuscript & 101 Portland Moons. Stay
tuned for publication information.
Really like the sense that these feel simultaneously like individual poems while at the same time being parts of one big poem. (Are all the poems we write part of one big poem I wonder?)
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