Page 17 - WTP VOl. IX #1

Daytime Moon
When I was a child, an out-of-step moon
was a puzzle at first, then a pitiful sight:
out shuffling dazed through the blue afternoon— why couldn’t the moon tell the day from the night?
It’s not any less haggard at this later date.
I see it hung low at the end of the street, lackluster and listless, a much-scoured plate, a target for anyone targeting skeet.
The hours we keep it appears not to heed,
like a lamp staying on from the evening before,
too late or too early to answer a need.
Where’s the switch for on / off? It has just either / or.
I suppose, on reflection (and let it be stated, reflection is what gives to moonlight its bounce), its mood of malaise fits our fear of what’s fated, our feeling of waiting for something to pounce.
After any old dismal terrestrial stuff
it once had to be sad about when I was small, these days of contagion are more than enough to keep its worn chalky face white as a pall.
Here and now, in and under a chilly spring sky,
as we contemplate what the Fourth Horseman will bring, we renew our acquaintance, the day moon and I,
with no end near at hand to our grim witnessing.
— May, 2020
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