Moon

What a manipulative moon is this thing called woman.

As you let go of the month she shows her Janus face. 

You miss her for the other twenty some things and almost fail to remember why you spiralled to this place.

When she is out though, it is worth the wait.

In reappearing, her humble brilliance kidnaps your song and morphs you into a slave-like tide, 

so you are left in a dreamy wondrous shore 

for something you have to wait another twenty eight days for.

Every end of the month we meet for the very first time. 

You offer me a private spectacle; I am keen to hear your stories in line.

It’s no use avoiding, because when she is present 

she’ll seek out your voice, and follow the crescent -

you will love her audacity again and again.

For the rest of it, you miss and anticipate, crave and endure, 

nurture and pretend to forget 

the effect Diana has on your core.

Mine has been stolen with your moon mirrored Iago;

an icy cold shimmer that burns through the pores of my chest

into an incomprehensible arduous zest of

something which feels not unlike sin.

But my loss moon is not your win,

for as you shadow your sections one by one

letting go of secrets behind the veiled sun,

I lose segments of mine own, my rivers, my venus and my unknown.

Only your full blown presence shapes me into something I once was.

Your phases cyclical, your freshness unending,

yet the lines by my sight work harder in welding

the skin of an ageing poet digressing:

You were born in a new moon -

what some call dark.

Heart of summer, the twelfth of June;

a black sheet riddled with stars.

Misleading me with your trickster light shining where there was no shine before,

bringing life to where, by morning, there will be no more.

A ray which strikes at twelve and I am the only one alive.

But for the greater part I just wonder where

have you gone my allied moon, play me not so.

How very youthful of you to come and go,

as you please, as I fall – you have my eyes you have my all.

And I am left to write words that take of me full and without;

the fiendish linger of a channelling doubt.

Your heart, my head: a hollow balloon,

release my strings so I may follow the moon.