Super Moon

I am in Plainfield, Vermont this week (via Brattleboro, where I got to have a brief dip into the beautiful world of my sweet friends Emma and Mike). Yesterday I drove with new and old friends up and up unfamiliar roads to find the best view of the ‘Super Moon’ cresting–our same old beautiful, constant moon, appearing larger and clearer on the horizon. The entire experience was a poem: listening to a radio station based on Ignition Remix by R. Kelly on Spotify, the repeated backing up and changing course as we sought out our spot, the silliness of serious people, the wildflowers growing on the mountainside. The pleasure of easy companionship found on a simple, sudden expedition. Here’s a little rough poem about it, inspired by that adventure and also by Twilight by Henri Cole (at the bottom). Every meaningful experience is a metaphor, an echo of the larger things you are experiencing and understanding but you don’t have to force it, which can get intimidating. Write with specificity about some experience in nature, and see what emerges. Then edit and strengthen.

Much peace, my dears. I’m away this week, so response time might be slower than usual, but you know I love poems in my inbox no matter where in the world I happen to be.

Super Moon
For Anna, who suggested the expedition

This rented minivan churns rocks
from unfamiliar mountain roads we travel
in search of a different view of the same moon
who followed us each down faraway streets
while our clumsy childhoods unfolded.

There are no directions to follow,
no single well-lit road sign leads us
to a marked vantage point,
announcing that we have arrived.

We borrow a field from people who never left this place,
have watched the seasons of these mountains
for all their years.

When we return to our temporary lodging
inches closer to ourselves, we drink cider
and marvel at the speed of objects moving across the sky
wondering if we’ll know whether we reached the highest point,
not sure we’d ever want anything to look the same every night.

Twilight BY HENRI COLE
There’s a black bear
in the apple tree
and he won’t come down.
I can hear him panting,
like an athlete.
I can smell the stink
of his body.

Come down, black bear.
Can you hear me?

The mind is the most interesting thing to me;
like the sudden death of the sun,
it seems implausible that darkness will swallow it
or that anything is lost forever there,
like a black bear in a fruit tree,
gulping up sour apples
with dry sucking sounds,

or like us at the pier, somber and tired,
making food from sunlight,
you saying a word, me saying a word, trying hard,
though things were disintegrating.
Still, I wanted you,
your lips on my neck,
your postmodern sexuality.
Forlorn and anonymous:
I didn’t want to be that. I could hear
the great barking monsters of the lower waters
calling me forward.

You see, my mind takes me far,
but my heart dreams of return.
Black bear,
with pale-pink tongue
at the center of his face,
is turning his head,
like the face of Christ from life.
Shaking the apple boughs,
he is stronger than I am
and seems so free of passion—
no fear, no pain, no tenderness. I want to be that.

Come down, black bear,
I want to learn the faith of the indifferent.

Henri Cole, “Twilight” from Blackbird and Wolf. Copyright © 2008 by Henri Cole.