“I have seen the movement of the sinews of the sky, And the blood coursing in the veins of the moon.”
– Allama Iqbal
In September,
the harvest moon,
named by the Algonquin people.
A gift to the earth;
endowed for corn, beans, squash, sunflowers,
and received in bright
thankfulness.
When, finally, the time arrives
for an autumn moon
to take its place between the earth and sun,
swooping as close to earth
as bright fireflies filling the sky.
Lunar scheduling;
a time to deliver scoops of light to
the shadowy earth.
Human faces staring upward
at the inky sky.
Stars dimmed by the golden moon
that shines on prairies, sand, on city streets;
glowing its song of moonlight;
offering a nocturne to the silent ground.
Each upturned face,
waiting to be christened with moonlight;
a conduit of heavenly fire
that moves from face to face circling
in contra dance around the rocky earth.
And each up tilted face
in Calgary and Cairo, Belarus and Brazil,
rhymes with golden light.
As the moon glow wanes above, it waxes here below;
endowing our faces with moonlight, a celestial loan,
leaving the moon with only orange and red,
while September yellow clings to us on earth.
The sound of light brushing our faces,
settling into place,
with sweetness of chamomile,
fragrant with the end of summer.
Whispers of the autumn equinox,
and the earth keeping promises.
Soon we must return
the borrowed lightening,
the buttery splash,
to the orange-red moon.
And we pay.
Not with regret,
but gladly.
All we who have seen the hushing of the moon;
we hold forever in the particles that make ourselves,
the seeds of moonlight.
Pieces of the moon.
I wrote this poem after observing the total lunar eclipse of 2015 in the Minnesota sky.