Half Moon, Small Cloud, John Updike
Caught out in daylight, a rabbit’s
transparent pallor, the moon
is paired with a cloud of equal weight:
the heavenly congruence startles.
For what is the moon, that it haunts us,
this impudent companion immigrated
from the system’s less fortunate margins,
the realm of dust collected in orbs?
We grow up as children with it, a nursemaid
of a bonneted sort, round-faced and kind,
not burning too close like parents, or too far
to spare even a glance, like movie stars.
No star but in the zodiac of stars,
a stranger there, too big, it begs for love
(the man in it) and yet is diaphanous,
its thereness as mysterious as ours.
sign up for a poem a day from Knopf.
photo
4 comments:
It’s also the cruelest month. But you probably knew that.
As my olde friend, Geoff Chaucer used to say
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Of course, whenever I’m in one of those “See, I Went to College” kinda moods, I like to say “April is the coolest month.” On accounta I was born in April. Clever, no?
Updike's moon:
a blanched grapeseed in dark wine
shared with orbiting friends
silent spirits
the dust is luminous
and the air is curving
as we spin stories
later, we bounce home like deeply mad angels
because we left the car on Mars
++++
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