Many Moons
First glimpse, a cat's whisker of moon
opens another month -
sharp and delicate.
In a short December nightfall,
its shy quarter face
can appear like a bright neon sign
on the dark side
of a frost-bitten near-night sky.
On a farm in Burgundy
I've seen its half face - the harlequin -
sailing like a spinnaker behind a hill
and many times I've observed
how the three-quarter moon,
full but slightly turned - its portrait face -
reminds me of the Mona Lisa,
steady yet vacant.
Once, its beamish autumn face,
in orange stage makeup,
kept me company beside the motorway,
floating along the horizon like a swollen pumpkin
until it rose, growing smaller and brighter;
and I remember another picture-book moon;
so low down it was gazing up our London road
between the elephant-legs of the plane trees.
One night,
driving in the special solitude of the small hours,
I caught the reflection of its plate face
sledging across the dark windows
of sleeping terraced houses;
and many times I've stood
watching its white watersnakes
writhing up and down a dark sea.
Once, in the bogus realities before dawn,
I mistook, for a chilling moment,
a moon setting over the sea at Marseilles
for the torpid rising of a dying sun.
Sometimes, translucent,
it lingers into the morning,
a curious day ghost fading into blue sky
like the Cheshire cat;
and on occasions it shows up in the afternoon -
like an early guest;
and, after whale-watching,
I saw an afternoon moon of a sort of pale violet,
some strange Hawaiian mist, no doubt;
perhaps the spouting whales had drenched it
in the cold salt water of the Pacific.
Its more familiar face,
that pale, jolly skull,
that lamp at the top of the stairs,
is a bright reflector of our dreams,
a luminous dial
telling the time without hands or numbers,
counting our days in fractions and slices
and month on bloody month
tallying our lives in tides and floods.
Although its small shadow
can entirely overcome the sun's power,
when totally eclipsed itself
it glows magically
in earth light
like a real, warm planet. . .
Sue Whitmore