Facts about the Moon
It’s a dark time of year, especially this year, and it strikes me that one of our questions right now — as a people, I mean, as human beings in this shared endeavor — has to be how to heal a broken world. The picture, from http://www.bluemountain.com/blog/2011/12/its-time-for-the-winter-solstice/, made me think of Dorianne Laux’s poetry book, Facts about the Moon. Here’s one of the shorter poems in the collection, though I would like to recommend the entire book. It’s about grief, which as I heard a writer somewhere say today, is research into how to be fully human.
Moon in the Window
I wish I could say I was the kind of child
who watched the moon from her window,
would turn toward it and wonder.
I never wondered. I read. Dark signs
that crawled toward the edge of the page.
It took me years to grow a heart
from paper and glue. All I had
was a flashlight, bright as the moon,
a white hole blazing beneath the sheets.
Dorianne Laux
It’s a coincidence I read this today. Last Saturday, I went to a poetry workshop where the presenter asked us to write a poem containing three stanzas: one about a mirror, one about the moon, and one about the winter solstice. I wrote about how in my grief after losing my husband, I reflect on my life while the moon hovers overhead on the night of the winter solstice.
Is that poem posted at your blog? I want to read it.
Not yet, but you just gave me an idea. Check on the 21st or subscribe at http://abbiescorner.wordpress.com..