full moon

Hunters Moon

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I stand at my back window near midnight. The night is cloudy, but still I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of the full October Hunter’s Moon.

I will not be using its light to search for my winter’s food store. So what am I seeking?  What will nourish me in the coming months of short days and long nights?

tell me what I see–
moon appears complete, sudden,
clouds glowing colors

wings against golden black
catch omens, rise, then fly

hunters moon close up 2s

Every two weeks The Ekphrastic Review has a writing challenge.  I usually enter, and always plan to do a collage for the selected work and publish my poem, even if it isn’t chosen.  Of course I don’t actually often have the time.  But Jane Dougherty’s repetition of Dale Patterson’s artwork, with 3 of her poems, spurred me to do my collage and revise my poem, which I wasn’t satisfied with.  It fit right into Frank Tassone’s “Hunter’s Moon” prompt.  Were you lucky enough to see it?

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You can see Jane’s poems here.  And those selected by guest editor Jordan Trethewey, at The Ekphrastic Review, here.

August Moon

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night wears luminous
 scales—I feel its pulses through
invisible nets

time resolves into kinship–
 everything opened, laid bare

what has been follows
 like a shadow, until it
too is discarded

stitched into shining patterns
 ancient and always brand new

A double tanka in honor of August’s Sturgeon Moon for Colleen’s #TankaTuesday words, light and dark, and Frank Tassone’s #HaikiChallenge.  Also called the Red Moon, perhaps the sky will clear enough tonight so I can see it.

As many have noted, the sturgeon is an ancient and endangered species.  I was please to find we have our own Hudson River sturgeons, still hanging on.  Fishing for them was banned in 1996.

 

Full Moon

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The sky is a mist of blue ghosts rising from the sea. The sky is a blanket of sparkling light that appears suddenly as if conjured by the fading horizon.  The sky is a layered curtain of shadow clouds that both disguise and reveal.

I sit without time, listening, watching. My body retreats from itself, my thoughts lose their words.  I am lost, dispersed, nameless.

full moon photo 2s

I become like the wind, seeking its reflection. I become like waves repeating their primal dance.  I become like sand searching for the spaces between.

I float, a grain inside my eye.

I dreamt I was the moon, a sudden seizure of oceans traveling the spirals of shells. I dreamt I was a relic from the sea, worn away into a celebration of return.  I became my ancestors, unburied and uncontained, released into the sanctuary of the cosmic coil.

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Sarah at dVerse has given us the prosery prompt “I dreamt I was the moon”, from Alice Oswald’s “Full Moon”.  I was lucky to be in North Carolina at the beach last week, where the moon was spectacular.  144 words and a few of my photos can’t even begin to capture the magic.