THE MOON'S BRIEF SHADOW

Life has given me many windows to look out of and there I contemplated my life. Ultimately I believe we all have a responsibility to try and make our lives worth living and worth remembering.

I don’t know what I can do, still I know I’ve got to try. –Pocahontas

The Moon’s Brief Shadow

She takes it as her
work to excuse the night right
when it is darkest before the
burgeoning sun enfolds the moon.
She has a choice, yet it is her limitation.
Shakespeare enters her thoughts--
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Staring out her
wood-framed window, she finds
her breath nourishing yet bereft.
She looks inside and thinks
in one death there is a new life.
It is her daily weakness
to understand her life’s strengths.

Her hair is looped around her ear.
The irises are pressed in her mind.
The smooth cream of her alto life
matches the sheen of her skin.
She is drawn to the garden and
walks through another doorway
flooded with the morning sun,
so much closer to the fresh air.

And she weaves her fingers together
and counts the clap boards of
the one wall of her view.
The four-sided silver shed knows
the weathered wood is from some
other time still standing firm and tall.
She never forgets the
mingling and learning of
the scars her soul holds.
A plank a year, and soon gray hair, she
measures how she has lived.

Together, she and the yellow heat stare
into her complicated soul,
warming her sweetness and vulnerabilities
many white winters have hidden.
Impulsively she takes her slip off
and lies in the morning sun,
feeling the dew of the green grass.

Life demands pulse, she thinks
mixed in her mind's quietude,
row after row, year after year;
constantly a tale that requires
a mirrored truth.

We are simply one in some way-
the mercies of many lives hidden.
And there in the yard of blades,
she becomes un-tethered
from the earth's illusions and
with her hands, writes
the words of her mouth.