Blue Moon
Something wakes her,
straining at the cobalt night to hear
a sound, an intimation, need. The light
puts thought on hold;
the moonscape that she sometimes knows is hers:
she is moon-cold.
Outside is sapphire,
and the pools sea at dusk, where the sun dips
round ruined promises.
She is all ears
straining the silence; she is a cat
in a high tree;
the wind
comes to her whispering:
set me free
like a child
she must still her heart to hear:
search for me
and she will
that is what it means, Muse: searcher,
midwife, surrogate.
Harlequin moon
On the day Punch and Judy
renewed their marriage vows, he
went to the neighbourhood watch,
took leave to care for Baby,
and poured away all the Scotch.
The moon, dumbfounded, turned first
this colour, then that; settled
for harlequin. Mr Punch
In his new guise as Pierrot
took a job in the movies,
met a starlet over lunch,
spent the afternoon in bed:
the moon turned back to silver.
New moon
for Ted Burton, opthalmic surgeon
First the analysis, instruments modern and complicated,
assistants measured over weeks charting its motility.
Then, on an ordinary day, to his work
where the familiar preparation cleansed body and mind
for a final analysis,
all his experience brought to bear on the crazed surface,
searching its secrets
from which he might judge and refine his judgement.
Next, the chemicals
no more than necessary to make the glaze malleable
and patience while it worked, whispering to the picture:
with a scalpel the delicate business of loosening,
slipping into the junction, prying it from paint,
little by little, bathing the revealed surface,
reborn to the light and vulnerable, in a protective bath while he worked.
Time passed.
And, the raw pigments made to withstand light’s blinding and bleaching,
fixing to this old marvel
a benign lens through which sight could be perfected,
he straightened to assess his work………
Not like torn Acteon, Phaeton fallen
Into the sun, drowned Icarus;
he did not aspire so high as to see
himself each revelation of the new world;
a single glimpse was his and enough, like the Patriarch,
And perhaps to die peacefully, in his own bed.
moon at rest
On one such perfect summer day
when the pale moon travels a deep blue sky
and our cats are sleeping in the house
dreaming of rabbit and of mice
and butterflies bask on the thistle heads
and a soft breeze ruffles the water reeds,
when the apple tree is weighted down
and the pheasant watch the ripening corn,
carry my ashes to the compost bins
and there, with family and friends
your audience and chorus, pour
onto that gentler, nourishing fire
the little that was once a man
where the long green grass snakes nest and sun