The moon is smooth. a silver orbital face reflected
off the surface of a crater turned
to lake.
A troubled man is there. He looks
down, at his helpless bare feet
framing a startled reflection
in a tiny lake, and he wonders if he should giddy up
on a mare, if he should get the fuck
out of there.
“It is better,” he thinks, “as is the case with all lakes,
great and small and gone to crater. .. even if I lose
again, we are bound to make it
later…” As we hunt, and begin to feel
better, he tells his moon face;
as we wound our selves as if death were treasure,
he says to She– who has kept him
safe though these many nights
of freezing air, through mortal danger, and wonder, his real face
the potentiated actual risk there, squatting as if set to scoff, again, pale
bitter obelisk with all master gains turned to spite, set to murder
the very lights that have kept him
awake and upright, whisper of a brother to beware the butcher,
knife slash, blood and bone and blade glinting
by that moonstruck glade,
across the canted cavern, the doomful shadow of his own brow.
“We’ll be alright now,” he whispers to the guardian of all nights
renewed, yet again, and again, “it is better, so much
better tomorrow, and now,” he tells the very hugeness
of Her, “we shall ever hang together as we hunt
the far-flung treasures…”
The moon casts her light,
a year-long visage of nanosecond
reigning full blown
quicksilver upon a changeling,
knowing
that he will keep a calm
mind; that he will find his own
way in the world.
—
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