Mid-February Late at Night
Intimidated by the glass,
I reach to touch a near-full moon
suspended on a near-black string.
It strays across tonight as I
have wandered across blank paper--
decorum over and done with.
The strange bones of my hands find their
own way (hasn’t always been so).
Outdoors, the rain hides the moon and
reeks of failure and I, unmoved
by its efforts, start to hate rain.
I have stood in this place a long
time waiting for shame to produce
the wild, tender thoughts I’ve called up
in the past. Where is the book I’ve
not written? Where is the house and
the barn I saw when I slept and
wrote about when I woke? Where are
the lumbering animals that
will find their way back home and the
farm wife in her wrinkled jeans and
patterned apron? Maybe they’ve been
cast upward into God’s shadows.
I reach to touch a sky that has
filled my life with false promises.
The old olive tree looks so cold.
Soon it will be Spring: warm, blameless.
Martina Reisz Newberry’s most recent book is Learning By Rote (Deerbrook Press). She has had seven other of her books published and has been widely published in literary magazines and books throughout the US and abroad. She lives in Palm Springs, California.
Intimidated by the glass,
I reach to touch a near-full moon
suspended on a near-black string.
It strays across tonight as I
have wandered across blank paper--
decorum over and done with.
The strange bones of my hands find their
own way (hasn’t always been so).
Outdoors, the rain hides the moon and
reeks of failure and I, unmoved
by its efforts, start to hate rain.
I have stood in this place a long
time waiting for shame to produce
the wild, tender thoughts I’ve called up
in the past. Where is the book I’ve
not written? Where is the house and
the barn I saw when I slept and
wrote about when I woke? Where are
the lumbering animals that
will find their way back home and the
farm wife in her wrinkled jeans and
patterned apron? Maybe they’ve been
cast upward into God’s shadows.
I reach to touch a sky that has
filled my life with false promises.
The old olive tree looks so cold.
Soon it will be Spring: warm, blameless.
Martina Reisz Newberry’s most recent book is Learning By Rote (Deerbrook Press). She has had seven other of her books published and has been widely published in literary magazines and books throughout the US and abroad. She lives in Palm Springs, California.
