Feel that moon pull? that tide-slosh
upswelling? spraying its salt breath
cleaning our breathing tubes? It’s our
life-ocean that is being called by the moon—
that little bulb with its moods, the one
that lights our nights off and on, and
though it goes away, will return with a slice
of itself, or with an edge shaved off—
a misshapen uncle of an orb, waxing gibbous,
growing into its whole self, a parent
we haven’t felt warmth from, who watches
us indifferently, except when we fall in love,
and then it glows, promising it will be there
forever, even if love comes and goes.
Patricia Gray has a poem in the winter 2024 issue of The MacGuffin and in The Plentitudes. In 2023, she was awarded an Artist Fellowship in Poetry by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and was a finalist for the 55th Millennium Writing Award for her poem, “Morning of Wilderness and Wind.”
