Day 1
New moon and new blood, the cycle
starts afresh. I writhe & gasp & try to bury
myself in sheets, lie curled and adrift
in the ocean of my bed. I cling to pillows.
My legs spread. New moon and new
rain, the storms whirl through; the skies open up
and my body does, too; we let ourselves go,
we scrape ourselves clean. There is a softness
to my thigh and a hardness to my belly and I plant my feet forward
and bleed. Red and surprising
as the first time, thick and painful, each time contracting
a small birth a new moon,
my womb feels like a planet beneath my naval
and I’m holding it, I create, the new moon.
Welcome.
And how we birth
& birth
& rebirth ourselves.
Day 2
The full moon that I caught sight of in the rearview mirror
as I merged onto the highway in a stretch with broken lamps:
that’s what I am dreaming of. That whole moon, which lit up the night,
and my tense, searching hands, which helped me find the road.
The moon anticipates roundness, there is an implication
of growth, she knows her edges will be filled in
and the rest of her will be revealed. Me?
What do I know of fullness?
I have at times been real and bodied, but my outward
appearance doesn’t fade and reappear with my dark side.
I hope for growth. I long for wholeness.
The sky is carving the heart right out of me and I want
to be full. I trust that I am waxing, because I have no other options,
and that is the natural way of things, the up and down.
My love is far away, and I am barely here; but the two of us
may meet again, and they will illuminate my hollows,
fill them with their light.
Day 7
Forest fires whip through the brush, snatching leaves off branches and branches off trees, and leaving the trunks blackened and spiky, lonesome without their trappings—but, often, alive. The conquering army has no time to kill all the inhabitants, merely to trample their homes and taunt their ashes. But the story of the forest fire is one of ecological sense and natural hope: the trees, with their roots and nutrient systems extending deep beneath the ground, linking one to another, survive. The fires? Part of the process of decay, death, rebirth; just another day in the forest. The losses? They will regrow. Trees do not know the word ‘loss’; they do not mourn their leaves.
Unless each parting is as a child, an offshoot departing on the wind. Unless each branch knows tenderness, and the tree is exhausted by change, by renewal, by the cycle.
You, moon—tell me what you know of loss.
Too much, you say. For the sun revolves round and she goes and comes back but I miss her every time; and the earth, which I watch over, grows heavy with tears. Everyone is in need of my glow like an embrace. Everyone is always crying at night and I am too far away to comfort them all; when they ask for their mothers and mean me, I reach out a hand, they are too far away.
I love you, moon, mother moon.
I love you, too. Or at least I try. I do not know what love is—do you mean the light?
