Category Archives: poems about the moon

Midnight Swim

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IMG_5518

Midnight Swim

I love this dark and quiet night
far from the loud and glaring light.
Solitary in the dark,
no mewling cat or warning bark.
The whole world in conspiracy
hides and holds and cushions me.
I move through water, side to side.
Through liquid currents, I freely slide.

Palms backlit by an opal moon
that’s dulled by clouds too soon, too soon.
The silence sliced by mosquito’s whine
mars a night no more divine.
Invader of my private night,
I fear its subtle stinger’s bite.
It moves in circles through the air
from shoulder to my neck and hair.

I swat at where it was until
it, alas, has had its fill.
Then it is off, leaving me
the pleasure of my company
devoid of interloper’s claim.
I wipe out memory of my name,
my age, my talents and my ills.
Suddenly, the pool fills

with the spreading whole of me
becoming part of all I see
and touch and smell and feel and dream.
I am, at last, all that I seem.
I float toward light, then climb the stairs,
free of worry and of cares.
If I can only fall to dreams
before old niggling prods and screams

invade my memory to call
me up against the judgment wall,
my whole intent will be fulfilled.
I’ll have achieved just what I willed.
Such are the charms of veiled nights
that cover over daylight’s frights
and lull us to our sleep and dreams
convincing us life’s what it seems.

Sunset and Moonglow

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img_7667jdbphoto 1/20/2019

Sunset and Moonglow

This moon is not derivative of any other moon.
If I called it a blood moon, I chose my words too soon.
It did not glow as brightly as that vivid red that flowed
when his heartbeat lengthened. When his breathing slowed.

It did not flow as scarlet as life lost by human hand.
It did not pool and sink into the all-obscuring sand.
It’s true that nature paints with blood when mortal creatures die,
but it casts a subtler color when painted on the sky.

The earth is not a marble. Night skies aren’t plastered with stars.
There’s no earthly equivalent for Jupiter or Mars.
When we use manmade metaphors to capture universal
beauties like the evening sky, it seems a real reversal.

When we dream of lovers’ eyes, they should shine like stars.
Stars should not merely twinkle like fireflies caught in jars.
Candy floss swells like a cloud, a sunflower’s like the sun.
Not the other way around. And when the day is done,

the sunset simply is itself and no artist can
duplicate its subtlety with pigments coined by man.

The prompt words today are marble, plaster, derivative and dream.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/rdp-monday-marble/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/21/fowc-with-fandango-plaster/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/your-daily-word-prompt-derivative-january-21-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/dream/

On the Night of the Blood Moon

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Click on the first photo to enlarge all.

I just couldn’t stop taking photos of the moon on this night of a full lunar eclipse. These may not be the best shots, but I was out there for two hours and I’m soooo sleepy. Strangely, this poem I posted earlier this year to one of Mark’s prompts popped up with the photos in my media file when I posted them. Don’t know how its link got recorded as a jpeg nor how it got here, but it seems to want to be posted again, so here it is:

Lucid Moon

With half a life lived in the dark,
an owl’s hoot, an answering bark,
the moon across the water scattered,
ragged clouds, wispy and battered––

I float in night and solitude,
the night determining my mood.
I lie in darkness and I brood,
a nightly lucid interlude.

When sunlight comes in fits and starts,
The day brings out my other parts.
They rise in me from dawn to noon,
dispelling powers of the moon.

Thus balanced between dark and light,
each half consumes its daily bite.
I welcome each within its time
Life varied, balanced and sublime.

Matt’s prompt today was “Lucidity.”  The common meaning of “Lucid” is “clearly expressed” or “easy to understand,” but another meaning is “bright or luminous.”

Revelation in Twilight: 19 Studies of the Moon

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Revelation in Twilight

This morning I woke early—an hour before light
obscured my vision of the moon, hanging like a kite
in the night-stained sky, there through my window bars.
suspended high up in a sky devoid of clouds or stars.

Just a minute later, it moved along with me
to float the pool’s surface that only I could see.
Too soon the sun would come, its golden light to douse.
But for now, it followed me as I walked through my house.

Friendly moon to loiter in my company.
It seemed this early morning that both of us were free
to spend a few rare moments quietly alone.
Both of us free-floating in the twilight zone.

(Please click on first photo to enlarge all.)

 

 

 

The prompt today was revelation. All photos by jdb.

Full Moon: JNW’s Halloween Challenge, Oct 28, 2016

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I can’t resist taking photos of the full moon. Perhaps this is why:

The Moon is Full and Waiting

 The moon is full and waiting, and though the night is chill,
my true love expects me over yonder hill.
His ardent call invites me to join him for the night,
and yet I dread the cold cold wind and the failing light.
If I were only twenty, I’d have no choice to make;
but I have guests arriving and sweet bites yet to bake.

My true love lies waiting over yonder hill,
but he’ll return another night. I am sure he will,
for he has no other to overlook his flaws:
the roughness of his ardor, the power of his jaws.
His embrace often bruises, though this is not his intent.
In the excess of his ardor, only tenderness is meant.

The warm cave of our meeting carves out yonder hill,
but tonight I will not join him. It may be I never will.
Tomorrow night the full moon will partially be spent,
and perhaps on next month’s equal, once more I won’t relent.
Perhaps I’ll find another closer to my kind,
though an equal to his passion I’m unlikely to find.

A swift wind blows the clouds away to clear the shrouded moon.
My guests will be arriving. I know it will be soon.
I stir in leavening powder. I stir in heavy cream.
Across the hand I stir with falls the moon’s broad beam.
I drop the spoon and go again to open up the door.
I hear the gentle song of wind, my lover’s beckoning roar.

I answer with a beat of blood. A spasm in my thigh
invites me to be climbing over distant hill and high.
The crumbs fall from my fingers as I run into the night.
I do not feel the bruising stones or the wind’s cold bite.
My lover calls me onward, and once again I go.
For when the full moon calls me, not once have I said no.

(If this poem sounds familiar, it is because it is a rewrite of one I posted earlier. It is just so appropriate for today’s photo prompt, that I couldn’t resist posting it again.)

https://jennifernicholewells.com/2016/10/28/jnws-halloween-challenge-full-moon/

Routes Laid Out by Heavenly Bodies

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P4270416 - Version 2

Routes Laid Out by Heavenly Bodies

The road of the moon
on the water
is a bridge
between us
leading me
to our new self.

When I am ready
to return
to what I was
before you,
that road
has vanished

but the sun
lights a different
pathway
and sends my shadow
ahead like a door
I seek to enter.

The oldest moon,
the sun at its birth
or just before its death
create  in us
just the suggestion
of a road.

That is why we rise early
for the sunrise,
gather for the sunset,
spill old blood,
howl howl
at the open moon.

This poem meets both prompts today. The NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem about a bridge. and the WordPress prompt was  “When the full moon happens, you turn into a person who is the opposite of who you normally are.  Describe this new you.”

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/the-full-moon/