SLAM!

Gift of the Moon

I lived a while pared to the bone,
an existence stripped of feeling, a dullness in my blood.
I was as thin and pale as the crescent moon.
I tried to speak of it, but my words
were both hollow and heavier than earth,
uninspired--which means without god's breath.

All too human, my own meager breath
was shallow, weak, unable to open the bone
cage around my heart. Unable to praise earth,
my home, I dragged my sluggish blood
across the grass. I had no words,
I could not pray even to my mother moon.

But she was kind, gentle looming moon.
She caught my gaze, she let me hold my breath,
she counted out the necessary grid of words
in the night sky, patient to the bone.
She waited, then, behind clouds, till my cold blood
felt at peace on the darkened earth.

Only then, calm, emptied, but rooted to the earth
in all its cycles--dark of the moon, hidden moon,
moon on high, dawn, noon, sun heating the blood--
only then could I take the deepest breath
and know ecstasy, a tremble at bone
level, too deep for thought, too rare for words.

And yet she let me have them--words!
My ecstasy--to speak of the dear earth,
blue, brown, green, and of the moon, the color of bone.
Still now she hides herself, my shy moon,
on nights of such rippling beauty as to take my breath
away, heart wide open, pounding with blood!

This is the song, bold or soft, of my blood,
pulsing lyric or lullaby of few and lilting words,
the line that breaks with a catch of the breath!
Now I can sing of the garden of earth,
its eternal ecstasy, hung between moon
and sun, flung with flower, dust, flesh, bone.

My blood rushes to touch the earth,
all words hushed but ready, till, at the rise of the moon,
with sudden breath, ah, joy to the bone!

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