Birthday Moonsong

Birthday Moonsong

Born  in the wolf moon,

at century's half-crack,

before the moving shadow box

before the singing pocket, the talking hand--

disjecta  membra of a war and peace,

nuclear snowflake crystaled in the cold aftermath,

fallout caught and whirled up

by black arms of concrete

into the sweet dance of chemical fog;

all around me

blackbirds falling

from the sky like almanacs

pages open to the gift of silent prophecy

and in the mirror, a white raven

solitary,
a meal, a target, a danger

to the flock, burning the eye like
a scarlet poppy

on a gravemound, or

a working girl unbuttoned

hungover 

in the convent.

* * *

In the house

at the edge of the world,

with the wolf moon low in the west,

its yellow eye on the scattering stars,

its tongue longing

for the fat white hams of Venus,

the north wind sleets the window glass

bitter green, rattling the taste

of old snow and bad design; the wolf moon

the hunger moon,
stops to lap

pooled pink from blood-red Mars,

swells its belly 

with faltering stars, the small and weak
gnawing them out one by one as I hum

dusting the ape statuettes, the

draped clocks, perplexed still

that the empty chair

stays empty another winter,

while the fire throws white shadows,

while ghosts fall with the snow.

~January 2015

A repost for my birthday.

Images:Wolf Dog, 1976 © Jamie Wyrth  Fair Use

The Snow Queen Flies Through The Winter Night, by Edmund Dulac  Fair Use