Moon Aching Song

Singing softly now from your altar of stone and staring from cold caverns far
away yet somehow close and intimate like a sigh or breath from the one I love lying next
to me, moon aching song almost full but rounded as a tear, as hip bone of woman or the
sound of my own voice in wonder and in sorrow, moon pouring song and holy dust
motes of contemplation drifting all around, how I wonder and wander down the steep
staircase of the days before getting lost in a forest, in a field, in a river and the
gladdening sounds of rushing water to clean and burnish this inmost feeling heart, moon
laden song how is it we look up at you on a clear winter night only three degrees and
snow all around in vast shrouding of peace, moon pregnant song in the fervent now
where prayer and longing live in the clef notes of deer tracks in the snow, who sang of you
long ago as I try to sing of you now, what man or woman or was it a child who
gazed up at you in the wide awake dream of heaven, moon dripping song and all
becoming, the seasons and the tides and the electromagnetic strings of the earth pulling
at our heels deep inside the ground, moon benighted song and the lyric rising up in any
throat before it is even felt or whispered, moon swaying song and Ecclesiastes for there
is a time to laugh and a time to stack the firewood, a time to make tomato soup and a
time to play the dulcimer or sheep-skin drum, a time to lick the envelope and a time to
cry out Moses, a time to dig up radishes and a time to hang clean sheets out on the line
in billows of ever after, a time to burn the pages and a time to blow a kiss, a time to
attribute personal meaning to dire weather and a time to walk out into a thunderstorm
half-naked, a time to write lyrics on a napkin and a time to throw this same napkin into a
bon fire so moon blossoming song and the stripped branches of every tree, how you
teach us forbearance and letting go and never turning away, how in all your luminous
staring God still somehow abides or behind it and the starlight reflected in a spoon, a
bottle cap, oh, moon delivered song above a lake in the woods and the threadbare
syllables of hello and goodbye and not nearly always barely just enough out of reach
close by and fading in the melted aftermath of a candle burning down.