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Hello everyone!    Since there’s a new moon on September 1, let’s draw inspiration from the Moon. For some writers, the moon is a muse, inspiring myths, stories and powerful symbols.   I have selected 2 poems for your appreciation:

Moon From the Porch

BY Annie Finch

Moon has dusks for walls,
October’s days for a floor,
crickets for rooms, windy halls.
Only one night is her door.

When I was thirteen she found me,
spiralled into my blood like a hive.
I stood on a porch where she wound me
for the first time, tight and alive,

till my body flooded to find her:
to know I would not be alone
as I moved through the tides that don’t bind her
into womanhood, like a flung stone.

With each curve that waxed into fullness
I grew to her, ready and wild.
I filled myself up like her priestess.
I emptied myself like her child.

Flooding, ready, and certain,
I hid her—full, fallow, or frail—
beneath each long summer’s rich curtain.
It covered her face—the thin grail

that delivers me now. Now I’m with her.
All cast shadows come home.
I stand in these shadows to kiss her;
I spin in her cool, calming storm.

Now as I move through my own beauty
and my shadow grows deeper than blood,
oh triple, oh goddess, sustain me
with your light’s simple opening hood.

 

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs at my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy spiritious mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky –
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness –
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness – blackness and silence.

For poets like Sylvia Plath, the moon is referenced to more than a hundred poems and functions as her emblematic muse- her Moon-muse, which is her deepest source and inspiration of her poetic vision.

The challenge is to write about the moon as if the moon is a person – flesh, sweat and blood.   Describe him or her, and tell us about your moon.

If you are new, here’s how to join:

  • Write a poem in response to the challenge – moon themed poem.
  • Enter a link directly to your poem and your name by clicking Mr Linky below
  • There you will find links to other poets, and more will join so check back to see more poems
  • Read and comment on other poet’s work, we all go here to have our poems read
  • Please link back to dVerse from your site/blog.
  • Comment and participate in our discussion below, if you like.   We are a friendly bunch of poets.
  • Have fun.

See you at the poetry trail. Grace