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.