Poetry Saturday: "The Moon Remembers"

I've been enjoying everyone's pictures of this month's full moon.  I had thought about walking to the beach to watch the moon rise last night, but it was completely overcast by late afternoon, with rain threatening.  So I transformed leftovers into a mac and cheese dish and settled in for the night.

It's been the kind of week where mac and cheese soothed my soul more than the moon might have done.

This morning, when I realized the amount of what I hope to get done today, I looked through my files for a poem to post.  One of the joys of doing that is that I find poems that I forgot what I wrote.

Here's one of those poems, for your moon viewing pleasure:




The Moon Remembers

                    “I sing and the moon shudders"
                                        Li Po, “Drinking Alone by Moonlight”




The moon does not approve of elementary choir
masters who stop the rehearsal, make each quivering
child sing a solo to find the one
who is off key. The helpless moon, marooned
so far away, wishes she could offer sanctuary.

The moon knows what the choir master forgets.

The moon doesn’t understand scales or the division
of voices into the caste systems of chorus:
superior sopranos, dowdy altos, basses as the bubble
of depth holding us up, the star tenor.

The moon remembers what the choir master forgets.

The moon sees our best selves as we sing:
the lonely driver late at night, singing to stay awake,
the melancholy mother, humming Christmas carols
to cheer the babies, the desperate lover
serenading the empty window.

The moon remembers what we all forget.

The moon knows that if we believed in our songs,
strengthened our fragile voices, and sang
as if we meant it, then galaxies would blow
to bits as the universe expands.