To the Empress Luna, Draft 1

The November 14th, 2016 Supermoon inspired this poem, enjoy!

The moon swings nearer to earth

than any time since my birth

 

and I gaze upon the creamed face

that now casts its cold light to grace

 

the night that no longer appears

as void where the dim stars are bleared,

 

instead the firmament seems a dome

of sapphire where those bright travelers roam.

 

I look upon the goddess Luna, so near,

yet set high above on a gravitational pier,

 

to see her new aura radiating

in silver waves, disintegrating

 

the sharp borders of her fullest stage

until she burns like the sun in his fiery rage,

 

but she is meek, not slighting my eyes

for desiring to be witness to her designs.

 

I strain to see her dark continents,

set in the milky sea’s pearlescence,

 

but the light now disguises the textures

of seas, continents, mountains, and craters.

 

As I strain, my eyeballs’ moist, slimy film

bubbles droplets of tears above my pupils,

 

refracting her soft aura like water

bending a stick. My eyelids quiver,

 

I blink and the myriad droplets pool,

making her aura unspool,

 

erupting as beams shoot straight

like white horses in a galloping gait,

 

casting many rays of varying degree

just as the sun casts his own rays sharply

 

through one’s pupils during sweltering days,

but meek Luna is merciful on my eye’s praise,

 

though the dry air is not, and it scratches

at my eye and it red veined patches

 

until I blink again, and the aura is frayed

like old quilts whose yarn is flayed.

 

The moon sprays out its milky light

that bends into a thousand arcs of delight

 

falling back to the rippled surface

like drops splashing on a fountain’s base,

 

and I cannot hold back a pooling tear

from dry, taloned air or welled emotions, sincere

 

as the solemn chants of holy crickets

who sing in the grass as lonely hermits,

 

but whose vibrating melodies merge

with night and moonlight into a single dirge

 

that praises the finitude of our lives

that only persist on borrowed time

 

with no one lot being noticeable longer

or more noteworthy than the other.

 

Now, as I listen to those quivering chimes

and gaze at the your celestial fountain sublime

 

I forget the cold trembling of my spine

or that I am still living on borrowed time.

 

I become the frigid night,

the vaulted dome of precipitous height,

 

I become the eremite crickets,

the floating stars and meandering planets,

 

I join in the ambrosial exuberance

of the luminous fountain’s jubilance,

 

I straighten into the rigid beams

only to dissipate into the aura that still gleams

 

so bright as to erase you sharp borders.

O meek Luna, you’re now the night’s ruler.

 

And for this singular, eternal moment

I simply am, purely existent,

 

and we are one! O Empress Luna,

I can only feel total euphoria!

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

Any polite and helpful criticism is appreciated!