Reflection on a Crescent Moon in Mexico

They tell me, don’t see her

as a sliver of God’s fingernail

in the sky, but rather see her

in a child’s drawing of God’s fingernail

found in an unexpected place-

an empty housing lot,

or that first love note you wrote

at age 8 to the girl with the prettiest

eyes and a way of sharing tiny

treasures with you- like feathers

and crystals she found while doing ungirlish

things in the woods behind the old strip mines.

 

We were a lot braver back then

and maybe more independent, too.

 

Tonight, I looked at that love note

suspended in the sky, as I always do when I

look for you; and there she was, waxing

from rapier into cutlass, on her way

to shield before she dissolves

into another month of this year

that is flying too fast, perhaps straight

into disaster, for anyone to get a proper

reading on. She expands and contracts,

like a breathing thing- if I could put my hand over

her ribcage, I would feel it moving towards

and away from her heart with each intake

and exhalation.

 

Exactly the way you let me draw so

near, then gently push me away, a cycle

I have learned to accept as inevitable

as the way my body sheds unnecessary

tissues and fluids every month, demanding

I replace them, always. I wonder if, in

your own collecting of small treasures-

her gaze across the decades of your

own passage and writing of love letters-

do you see, I also breathe in and out,

in time with the rhythm of things both

great and superficial?

 

The only constant I have ever found

is the telling of these little stories I write

to you, as my own slices of love letters

that the world will never understand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

A friend recently advised me to spend some time reflecting on the nature of love and its presence in my life. I was walking the streets of a tourist town in southern Mexico, thinking of my friend's words and enjoying the light of a waxing crescent moon, and was inspired to write this. Th eopening line was from a piece of writing advice I saw once, somewhere- saying that the artist is not the one who sees the sun as a yellow dot in the sky, but rather who sees a painted yellow dot on the sidewalk, as the sun.

Like much of my recent poety, this one was translated from my original in Spanish, which can be found here:

http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/zorra_encantada/1914683/

picture is a stock photo