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Hunting the Moon

I
STEP into the snap chill of the April night
and before the motion-detectors see me and flood
the world with incandescent glare, I see
the Moon, in the clouds, in the trees, in the east.

Nothing could have prepared me for such a sudden breath:
Not spending the better part of three days studying
the energetics of the planets, not the secret desire to be here,
not anything.  I look at her.  She looks at me,
low and still and large.  My mind interjects with a question:
What sign is it in?  Hmm.  I don’t know.  I do
know there was an eclipse this morning.
I know that Saturn conjoining the Moon can thwart the emotions,
And some say that Saturn square the Moon, unless 'redeemed',
can signify a lifetime of affliction by karma.
She disappears into the clouds, and I am safe.  One step
and I am seen by the floodlights, which
burst in and erase the entire sky.
 
Minutes pass as I drive, and I stop at your house.
Smeagol is playing Beware of Dog.  I say hello
but he ignores me, gone wild.  Now I step away from
the porch, closer to the night time, and
she is back, lighting up the world.  Alice Bailey
says she is dead.  Some say she is a lens
of consciousness.  I say she is silent
and listening: listening to the silence.
The buzz of a streetlight, some dogs barking,
an occasional engine passing on Main Street,
only make the silence louder.  She is listening to me
stand here with nothing to say, struck
dumb, moonstruck, my boots solid
in my two footprints.  The Earth will turn and
she will seem to traverse the night,
and in the dark of morning she will set
against the shadow of the Catskills, and I will
watch from the ridge as we disappear.

-- Eric Francis

Rosendale, NY, circa April 15, 1995. This poem was written about the same
week as my first horoscope column.