May 19, 2008
Monday Poem
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Hazy Moon
Jim Culleny![]()
Last night I almost hugged the hazy moon,
that crazy bubble in the sky
who is ever entering new phases.She rose red, round, and huge
as a melon of imagination.She loomed listening to the pine pitch
and birch bark, an ear for the night choir.
She tugged,
I leaned as she rolled higher.Two hands from the horizon
she pulled in humble as a quarter,
levitated, and kissed
the high limb tips of a twisted
locust tree.For a moment, free
in the circle of her gravity,
I understood what that chalkball moon
held over me.She hovered like a lover on a balcony
waiting for a star to shoot.
She disappeared once each month
leaving the shadow undilute,
but she was never faithless.Always she returned
sweet as an arc of canteloupe,
billowing like a parachute,
calling to the oceans in their cells,
reaching down to the tips
of the deepest roots,
coaxing up through the tender stems
of slender shoots,
dragging, even through the leather hearts
of old galoots
the purest waters of the poorest wells.
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Posted by Jim Culleny at 12:06 AM | Permalink






















Comments
Dear Jim,
This is a lovely poem and made my heart fly reading it early this morning. Thanks!
I wish we could communicate in Urdu because I know literally hundreds of verses on the moon, especially in the genre of Ghazal. Anyway, yours is also a very beautiful piece. Congratulations!
Azra.
Posted by: Azra Raza | May 19, 2008 5:21:02 AM
The moon is such a well worn subject of poetry, it's refreshing to see it in this intimate way, as a lover on a balcony.
Posted by: aguy109 | May 19, 2008 7:57:30 AM
Azra,
The moon does cover a lot of poetic ground.
In my writing (besides being a hazy moon) it's also been "The Peculiar Moon"; "Starwberry Moon"; the "The Moon and Venus"; "Sun, Moon, Stars, Rain"; "a man falling from the moon" and more.
I guess it should come as no surprise that a thing simultaneously so ordinary and fabulous might cause a wondering brain to sing.
I'm happy you like the poem. Thanks.
Posted by: Jim | May 19, 2008 9:09:47 AM
Nice. On topic link: "The Minor Enactments of the Moon"
http://stagepoetrycompany.typepad.com/stage_poetry_co/2007/10/the-minor-enact.html
Posted by: Edward Williams | May 19, 2008 2:36:07 PM
That's good Jim. That old moon has a gravitational affect on people too.
Posted by: hamishm | May 19, 2008 2:44:00 PM
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