The Net of Moon

Impact of these splendid

                things
upon the appropriate sense
How refuse to meddle with it, throw it away, play
to hide our passion in the dance of that moon
        upon the small waves, how come to it hugely
        erected and keep, we tell ourselves, a just balance be-
tween the emotion and the motion of wave on the bay, the
leap of the dolphin in our dreams, accompanying us home?

Hello moon.

From the Mary Murray's upper deck

the wind is stiff in our faces

                                                Another spring as warm
                                                10 days earlier
                                                the moon is still out

another year falling across its face so slow-
ly, so flatly the motion of wave as I do
fall back astonished, take my glasses off, the shore lights
so close,
fuzz to myopic eyes sting in wind, the
tide is full, he said, the moon lies fair upon the straits.
Let me tell you, let me tell
you straight, strait and very narrow indeed, encloses

Lights white
or red mark the
bell buoy's
clang against the dark bay
over it, over    .     it    .    The tail
of a Brooklyn ferry disappears behind
an anchored tanker, fail,
I fail to see and put glasses back on,
I fail
to     .

Laughter along the lift of deck,
lovers stand at the rail, close on
From the rail we see
fire-glow from the interior of the
island, smoke-smell drifts out
across the lower
                              bay,
to us, ten days later, a year gone,
            burnt across a bright face
that looks like it's been chewed on,
                          but will not die      .

The quarter-moon glints on the water
                nailed, nailed on the sky

Goodbye moon      .

(Paul Blackburn.)