Nearly Full Moon, January 7, 2012

It's been a glorious day in Northeast Ohio: Forty-Six degrees and sunny. And as the sun was going down on our 5:00 p.m. walk, the nearly full moon was rising and reminding me of all the moon poems I have ever read and written. Back in the mid- 1970s, I wrote my master's thesis on Plath's moon imagery, and the more thesis I wrote, the more poems I wrote.


In celebration of the moon and the 1970's (remember the Bicentennial?) I post two of my previously published poems, "I Witness the Lunar Eclipse of 1982 and Write My Last Moon Poem" and "More Moon Poems."

I WITNESS THE LUNAR ECLIPSE OF 1982 AND WRITE MY LAST MOON POEM

It is full, full as your throat the moment before

telling something big for the first time,

that weighted with its own import, too.

For a week it's been one huge

melon of a moon, prettiest since the U.S. Bicentennial

That Fourth of July, we watched

two hundred years' worth of fireworks, cooed

to the baby, "Ooo!

What a good one!"

after each mum of light.  Once in the silence

she cooed back, "Look, Grandma!  Isn't it a good one?"

"Oh, Danielle, that's the moon!"
"Yeah, isn't it a good one?"

Isn't it a good one?

(First published in Twenty-four Poets and Just One Moon. Copyright Diane Kendig 1989).

MORE MOON POEMS

                                Are all the poems about the moon written? Oh, no,

                        there is still much to say about the moon.--Artur Lundkvist

New Moon at Sunset

The sky reflects the pink of a shirt worn

and washed for centuries, like this moon,

worn and watched, now tugged,

a scimitar caught on the sleeve.

.        Quarter Moon, What Roethke Meant

Two nights we straining the sky

and catch the moon in a tree’s sieve:

citrus zest, sickled—peel

without pith, seed, flesh, stem—

“all shining, a scattering.”

       Harvest Half

Early on, came on,

orange and now lies in the lid:

a children’s bright vitamin

some dark child bites into.

                                                                                    Moon Viewing

                                                                       

                                                                        In Japan, she saw the full moon

                                                                        This way: a mirror above a pool below

                                                                        The moon: moon on moon on moon.

The Chrysanthemum Moon, Waning

The ninth moon

pours butter that settles

in night’s cast iron bottom

                New Moon After Sunset

      Just after: indigo, pink

      and tangerine vie

      for the light of it

      while the moon,

      thin as a ribbon edge, rises.

Coda: On the Moon’s Constancy

Like the sun, it rises

And sets, but makes the bed

Oftener and with different sheets each time.

(First published in Windsor Review. Copyright Diane Kendig 1995)