When I was young, I caught a moonbeam
in a jar.
And I caught the summer breeze, too,
and the smell of wildflowers,
and just the way the mourning dove sang
outside my window.
And the moonbeam glanced through the glass
in a thousand rays,
and the breeze swirled around
for a hundred days
and the dove’s notes trilled and echoed back
into themselves.
And I put them in a little drawer
and turned the key –
to keep them safe, you see.
But I kept them there for overlong,
the lids were tight, ******* on too strong,
and dust had settled over the tops.
And when again I pulled them out,
the moonbeam flickered, small and sick,
and not so quick, the summer breeze.
The flowers were a vague perfume of
summer, and the birdsong was a whisper,
nothing more.
Most carefully I unscrewed all the jars,
and shook the remnants out the window like
dead things.
But the new wind caught them and
carried them away on its wings,
ferried off to the grave of the uncatchable things.