A Notebook – Since 2007
night click a restless pause
some person place or thing
poses in the stillness a mouse
the whole world shudders
selfie from the moon hangs
on a wall opposite the bed
sunclipse sunclipse sunclipse
topsy-turvy reversal flips
subject becomes object
the black and white moon
the whole glue-green earth
crawling with chrome
some asleep under shutters
proof bed sheets slide off
on a cold moon walk night
the master editor rights all.
~~~
There’s a full moon this week, the daytime temps near 100, so we’ve been out walking late, out for some cooler air, the house so hot. A while back I made a playlist of songs with the word moon in the title:
It’s Only a Paper Moon, Moonlight in Vermont, Moon River, Fly Me to the Moon, Moonglow, Paper Moon, Moondance, Moonlight in Vermont, Havanna Moon, Blue Moon of Kentucky, Blue Moon, Polka Dots and Moonbeams, The Moon Song, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, Moonlight Serendade, Moonlight Becomes You, No Moon at All, Oh You Crazy Moon, Shame on the Moon, Walking on the Moon, How High the Moon, When My Moon Turns to Gold Again, Au Clair de la lune, The Stars the Night the Moon, Shine on Harvest Moon, Harvest Moon, Moonlight (Claro de Luna).
When we got back from our walk I played a few of the moon songs on the acoustic guitar. Still later, still unable to sleep, I got out of bed and from the open window took a photo of the moon. There’s nothing special about that photo, taken with my cell phone, of the moon over the fir trees over the old they say extinct volcano in the city.
“Ah, they’ll never ever reach the moon, at least not the one we’re after,” sang Leonard Cohen, in “Sing Another Song, Boys” (1971), which doesn’t have the word moon in its title, so it didn’t make the playlist.
Things appear different at night, are different. There are so many distractions during the day, chores, reels, but it’s different at night.
“It’s easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing,” says Hemingway’s Jake Barnes, in “The Sun Also Rises,” from 1926.
But a full moon can take the edge off of things at night, soften the heat. Draws you up. And besides, unlike Hemingway’s Jake, lately I’ve been looking forward to the night, a book waiting on the nightstand, moonlight streaming through the open window, lucky to have Susan by my side, not having Jake’s problem, my playlist of songs with moon in the title streaming in the kitchen earlier while I put together something cold for dinner, playing in my memory. Memories of the Moon. Moon Momentoes.
And you don’t want to go getting too literal about it, so-called science of the thing, the light of the silvery moon, how it’s dead, and it doesn’t really have its own light, but is simply reflecting the sun. The mechanics of the thing. There you go again. See, you’ve ruined another night. The moon is a cartoon.
All is lost
whispers this ghost
as the moon passes
over the firs
a galvanized pipe
shaving from a
threading machine
This ghost found
to haunt our
gaudy present
Via benefits
toys for boys
buoys for weary
ones still at sea
The moon moves on
slow goes the night
click, click, light
from an old slide show
The astronauts cardboard cutouts suspended
by gossamer string theory, the Space Station
an elaborate Tinkertoy. Night comes when
you turn their backs to the sun, day when
they face the solar wind, wait for a swell,
come about, and paddle into a soft shoulder
breaking away from a night full of mind
fulness, full of white paper plates skipping
across the space of the waters, rising
with the trough, riding the crest
parallel to the edge of the universe
so going nowhere in time or space
(for the time being)
and paddle back out to the firmament
of no land, no waters, no herb or grass
of any kind, only a dead moon
giving light to the night below,
a lesser light, in which the humans
hold hands, dance in circles, sing songs,
and paint shadows on their walls.
The moon, our moon lit night
candle brooding sediment
embraces you in umbrage
through the trees down
to the waterline up from
the riverbank wandering
through the shallows
in motion with slow
crawling eddies around
emergent rocks and felled
trees this night a dropped
stitch in time’s throw,
that night we lost
an hour and more.
Sun blasted yeses across space and time
and the moon goes down in a mist of no
earth rolling moving warming ice caps
melting and the seas rise first a foot toe
a frozen continent calving crumbling
a piece at a rhythmic mythic time slow
so slow lights dim smoke cake rises
and they learn to go easy the strung horns
plucked and picked by the breeze afloat
in cosmic currents first detected in the 60s
of each receding century shoveled under
fallen garages leaning walls broken
foundations sinking into the ocean
nowhere now to park the rigs the stallions
of snow unleashed from barns of bane
from frozen fears offered up to the sun.
Along line where words follow
one by one each distanced and obscure
like items of trash along highway
stuck in weeds between ditch
and fence lift shifting cars passing
sailing into wind of logic
or like grocery carts out of line
and place scattered about full
of claptrap and flapdoodle
unexpected foundation
for absurding suburban
where shopping rigs
get garaged for night
like pigs asleep in makeshift
huts with conquistadors
while in city in loose
deduce gathered around
poles trees once lived
covered in plastic people
under new moon of normal
dining al fresco in fresh
air of improvised jail
things will never be same
way things have always been.
The stars will blow out they say
tho none have seen one up close
or this far away for that matter.
And for now the center still holds
the “deep heart’s core” burns on
of course tempered with age.
The tool worn and bent its handle
once forged so hot to the touch
now almost cold the closer you come.
The further astray and adrift
solo in space in your egg shaped
spiral lost in your milky way.
Why nine chains to the moon?
Because things arranged in threes
allow a mysterious symmetry.
“Li Po’s Restless Night: Improvisations on a Theme” is now available in e-Book and paperback formats. Ideal reading for those with restless nights in quarantine, “Li Po’s Restless Night” includes 101 original variations on a theme of Chinese poet Li Po, with an explanatory personal essay, “Florence and Li Po,” though the essay may make better daytime reading. There was a time when I was able to close my eyes and not open them again for eight hours. Then the moon rose.
In the news, water discovered on Earth’s moon: Not so much water apparently though that NASA will start shaping surfboards for its astronauts; nor is discovered quite right – confirmed or proven more precise. Meantime, of course, what with someone always turning up the global warming thermostat in the house, we’ll soon be wanting to bring some of that moon water down to Earth. And where there’s water, there could be also be tomatoes. And where there’s tomatoes, there could also be salsa. Now, a salsa party on the moon – countdown! And where there’s water, there’s sound, so the previously assumed to be silent moon, if you put your ear to the crater, just might produce some good vibes after all; and what’s a salsa party without music?
The Coming of the Toads 