My heart, I miss you

Here, over the mountain,

the moon rises

as a pumpkin

seed. I wonder

what it is doing

in the chalky cities

of elsewhere. If

like a photo, it is

rising -alabaster, speckled,

over the purple-seeded

furrows, the wild

grasses of Sligo. Where

Yeats, perhaps,

watched night rise

once or

a thousand times,

thinking of counties

whose names

I have forgotten. In the photo

the moon rose

so large I thought,

were I there, I would

balance it

in my hand. Were I there,

under the seersucker

of summer,

whist holding

the staff, darkness

spreading itself up

above the night.

Were I there,

I would whisper: I am only

a root, a heartwild rover

unable to grasp the shift

of your colors. Growing/

shrinking.

Horned. But not

holding

on to the dark. Where

the things within

become clawed, bronzed

as a barreling chariot

trying to outrun

the memory

of light.

Author's Note

2015