The Full Moon

God I loved you,
like the Antarctic ice shelf crashing
into the Great South.
Just the now of it,
how that moment was
beginning and ending
with nothing either side.

The risen full moon’s yellow eye
can witness but never understand
the seamless elapsing there.
Our breath white smoke to cold air,
we stayed beneath the blanket’s glamour
where time was space and space was time.

Don’t wake love and burden the poor light
which modern science breaks open to reveal –
the old adage of the heart’s bemoaning;
stirring would shatter the still mosaic
of such an ardent desired archaeology.

I wrote the first three lines of this poem in 1971. I finished it in 2013 when I decided to write again.

(First published in  ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice 2015,  ‘Unstill Mosaics’ 2019.)

Digital Artwork by Christian Schloe