"Moon, Shine On" by Jack D. Harvey
Poetry
Moon, Shine On
It's one of those nights when the moon slips free of the clouds; one of those nights when the wind blows free, unleashed from the upstarting contours of the land, sweeping, rushing across the wastes of the immortal boundless sea, finally arriving aimless and energetic at some newfound destination. Moonlight shines across the long bays, in which great brother waves press on under the moon's bright face, bright as death's scythe, press on roaring until they come to rest, flat and quiet, on the moonlit shore. Heroes young and old held vigil on nights like these; memories of the god-feasts, the dark woods, the sacred tree dim and nearly gone now. In those days witches could doctor the dark, pull down the moon if they had to; fearful Nicias, famed Athenian sent to war in Sicily didn't need a moon sunk to earth, heeded instead the omen of a technicolor moon, dimming to naught; waited, waited, too long hesitating, then at the wrong time retreating, led his army to its doom. But gracious fellow-travelers, lovers of the glory that was, these days it's the self-same moon, stripped of portents, floats over Cuba, floating over Miami, too, over a moon-startled girl feeling her boy bent over her, passionate in her, starting his rhapsody of movement. Overhead, in the heavens, embarrassed constellations look off in all directions, seeing all, and not wanting to see, goosed, tormented, by an expanding universe sending them on their way and down below, by the light of the silent indifferent moon a boy and a girl coming together in a paratactical now, in a perfection of now and no wild Nicias moon turning red, blue and sallow to spoil the moment with foreboding, to slow or speed the whole shebang from measured order to some desperate fatal mistake.
About the Poet:
Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies.