Monday 20 June 2022

The Mother of the Moon

by Nick Gisburne



The moon was such a pretty, precious thing,
I took it and I hid it in a hole,
But now I hear a voice inside it sing,
Beseeching me to free her grieving soul.
“I am,” she weeps, “the mother of the moon.
Your folly, senseless, selfish, broke my boy.”
Her words, a dirge, a moving, mournful tune,
Destroy the deep foundations of my joy.
I crack the shell, the shine, to find her face,
As round as any penny, plate, or pearl,
And, lifted to the sable sea of space,
She makes another moon, a gleaming girl.
    The night extends a welcome with its ink.
    The moon I broke was blue, but she is pink.