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Moonsets

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Patricia Fontaine
Last Modified: March 15, 2004

The first morning,
the moon bounces off
the back of my sleeping head,
a full ball, full of wake up,
watch how I make my way
down the cloud ladders,
how I blast a path on water,
how even when I disappear
behind a thick rung
light sprays out:
how it makes a V
above and below.

The second morning the moon
is diffused, descending on its
slant through haze, the path
on the roughened water
soft and wide.

There in the bed
it is time to review
what I have learned
about cancer
before the moon's wide eye.
I think about what my sister said,
that I seem less grounded
than last time, how I tidied up
chemo and radiation with
calm resolution and
resolve to live easy.
It was easier
to surrender to
the whole shot then,
11 of 14 nodes became
the drop of the flag,
how I kept going
slow around the track
finishing up
with reluctance and
a little peace.
You were in
a better bubble,
she told me,
didn't let things
get to you
so much.
I know she worries
about my grief now,
the large hot stone
of my loneliness.

This time, I've been off road,
careening into feelings,
roaring out of ruts or
idling through my house,
moving a stone from
one window sill
to the other.

I am more afraid.

And no poems
until now, pulled out
by the moon, so that
when I ask what the hell
I'm supposed to learn,
the faces of friends and sisters
loom into the pearly light,
I loom into the pearly light,
all of us in motion,
flying really,
because this time
it is not about being
grounded,
when the bottom rock
of my life has been
hard smacked.

This time, according to the moon,
it is being in a place that is
neither ground nor ether,
but a round bright place
that connects.
Encircles.
That connects
and connects to everything.