I'm at a party. Evening. Yard. A tea-stained pregnant moon ascends
blue gulf behind the oak. Not Luna--this moon's ringed! But no,
the alien halo slow-dissipates to arcs: just contrails curiously curved
and momently aligned; mere atmosphere. And those twin lights,
eyes bright on the moon-rim, must be planes just passing;
jets in the night.
But heartbeats pass, the moon snails higher--and the lights cling firm.
Volcanoes, comet strikes? But not red wounds; a steady white. Palomar
and Keck will see; confirm their artificiality. I stride across yard; hope-fear
my parallax-shift will reveal they're not lunar: near. No. Two stars persist!
Eyes on the disk.
At last I can't resist a lunar trip--side-slip into shamanosphere. Here
the moon is small and near, hung in a willow tree, touchably low.
Sidle up to Luna slow, so as not to scare. Like a shy girl in a bar.
The moon's the skull of a deer! The lights, two shards of glass. Or are
those deer-eyes true jewels? Kalgoorlie opalescences within
flash and mist.
I lift the wary moon from willow branch. Pocket eyes, slip her skull in
a deep soup bowl. Add water, wash. Uh-oh. Do I plan to stew
and eat the moon? But she's corpse-bone. Shreds of sinew
and skin; velvet scraps rot on the horn. Flay to bone, and brew
the reeking shreds. Surprise! The soup's a putrid mess. I
can't eat this!
Wait--who forced me? I chose, and I can un. Apologize to her deer soul,
pull out her skull, pat her dry, and hang her high on willowfork
clean-boned, and walk away, my coyotish cookery nearly all undone.
And yet I won
der. In my pocket, opaline deer-eyes still hide. As I side-step and return
to the human party, innocent as a doe having a smoke on the lawn...
will the moon-towns be gone? Oh, they can't yet shine; decades too soon!
Had to be done.
But here in human time, where jewel-eyed deer are still as absurd
as lunar cities premature... will my pocket be bare? Or aglow
with light to come?
