You are the Moon: A Poem on Ethereal Love | Thursday Verse No. 26

  Love takes many forms, lingers in many places, and does not always belong where we wish it would. And yet, in letting it move as it must, we find our way back to ourselves. We spend so much time reaching outward, only to realize that love, in all its forms, quietly leads us inward.

You are the Moon

Photograph by Alex Stone on Pexels.

Does the chill breeze 

of early November night,

Shining her Frost Moon light

Onto your ever-bright smile

Remind you of me,

The way it reminds me of you?

I.

You are the Moon 

in its fullest glow,

Reigning o'er the dense night's shadow,

The radiance of your visage

falling over the parched rivage,

allures my wandering gaze,

into a deep lunatic daze.

II.

Left agape,

I, an enchanted dame, 

venture to capture you in a frame, 

To chance watching your soothing blaze, 

through the glare of warm summer days.

I trigger the time-freezing device,

holding it steady and precise.

Click! In a nick of time,

My camera generates a polaroid—

A blip against the blackest void, 

with not the slightest vestige of your divine sublime.

III. 

Disheartened, I study you for the longest while, 

carving the curves of your smile, 

onto the folds of my longing irises,

till the indigo of dawn arises. 

IV.

When the golden hour tames you,

distilling the night's memory into morning dews,

I sail away without a rue,

in my oak canoe. 

V.

You are the Moon,

she claims her own,

she calls your hers, and hers alone,

Her eyes linger through the starry space,

tracing the residue of your waning phase.

She neither winks nor sighs;

She devoutly awaits your sight, 

Like Meera for her Krishna.

But I,

during your New Moon stage, 

return to my cottage, 

to feed my hunger,

and catch a blink of slumber.

And at day break, 

I wander off by the lake, 

Foraging berries and cattail,

And unfurling my sail.

I travel miles, 

espying the reflection of my brilliant smile,

Some days,

I longingly look at the sky,

Some days,

I find joy in my splendorous smile,

Perhaps, that is why I was never truly yours,

and you were never truly mine.

- Mercy Rebonica