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P.J. Nights
sea of tranquility
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right
--S. Plath
other times and places
it might be a lady, a fleeing rabbit
or Kerouac’s moon
with a cat’s mustache
but as a child I believe
what I’ve been told --
the moon is a man
close enough to touch
who watches over me
sweeps shadows
from creepy corners of my room
exposes hobgoblins as baby dolls
in pinafores
La lune ne garde aucune rancune
--T.S. Eliot
pristine and clean
a gold coin face in relief
or a balloon filled
with ee cummings' pretty people
flying from a city Oz-like and green
on tv, they interview
an old man born a slave
just over a hundred years before
who can’t believe
a rocket that big could ever
hang off the hook of the moon --
on that little crescent in the sky
how could it?
each time we fill up the station wagon
we get a cardboard lunar module
I put one together with small fingers
and soon I know
the moon isn’t something to be caught
and put in a back pocket
not even with it here
in my living room
on black-and-white tv
the men on the moon so small
it must be a million miles away
God is fired! / Do I need the moon to remain free?
--T. Berrigan
yes! the moon
(to hold our footprints
for millennia)
and the unveiling of galaxies
clockworks and happenstance
independent of man and his gods
which free me
to turn my own spirals
bring the moon close to heart again
I see the kiss of humankind
in a sea of tranquility
my daughter raises her arms
to the round, familiar face
lift me up, Mommy, so I can touch it
I'd live on the Moon / if the commute / were a little less
--E. Dorn
I can imagine
nothing more beautiful
than earth-rise above moondust
moon men and maidens in my stories
marvel at blue and white perfection
made possible by distance
©2003 by P.J. Nights
P.J. Nights lives in coastal Maine, teaches physics and astronomy further inland, and is the senior poetry editor of MiPo. Her poetry appears in print in Animus, Penumbra, Slow Trains Volumes I and II and the textbook, Language and Prejudice.
Her works have been or will be published on the Web at Apples & Oranges, Bellatrix Blue, Steel Point Quarterly, Blue Fifth Review, The Green Tricycle, Stirring, Erotica Readers & Writers Association, Slow Trains, CleanSheets, The Lightning Bell Poetry Journal, MiPo, LotusBlooms, the muse apprentice guild, Lingerings, Mind Caviar, Amoret, the Emerald Collection, Ophelia's Muse, Tasha Klein's Gallery, Hoot Island, Writer's Hood, Tryst, La Rosa Blanca, MiPo Print, and Erosha. Her poetry has been recognized by the IPBC, NPAC and the Preditors & Editors Reader's Poll. She was chosen as the Poet Laureate for the Spring '02 edition of Amoret's Emerald Collection, and won 1st place in the 2003 (6th annual) Poetry Super Highway contest.
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