Moon with her sail full of myths,
trickery and slippery hope,

moon in a fever of insomnia,
charming flaws and
half-hearted,
grainy light,
beautiful and broken
like the world it
spills into . . .

In the unmoving,
metallic night
the old hurts, the past,
dead but embalmed with
unsettling realism,
have the audacity to
stalk my last
pure moment.

What do I do with this
intangible vault,
sometimes a shrine,
sometimes a voice like
the deep sea,
grumbling,

hauled
from one day into
the next?

But then . . .

without the dark, what is
the fractured enchantress
above the pines?

Wouldn't stars go
unseen and unloved
if not set against the
tunneling blindness
of forever?

And would there
even be a universe
without the
ingenious scheme of
contrast?

So let the past
seethe and grimace
and screech from the chasm.

All is as it
should be in this
darkly radiant Now,

and while I'm here,
tell me, Clear Moment,
all about the place,

and the me,

I have forgotten,
and for a sprint in
your revelry,
for an instantaneous
forever,

I embrace you in the
shadows of Light.


Patricia Joan Jones