THE MOON POEMS ARE WAXING LYRICAL
This morning a light wind tickles the leaves and drops of rain, held there temporarily, fall. No bird song yet in the faintly herbed air.
Alt Text says this week’s photo is a moon in the sky, and this makes me chuckle because I wondered if this might be the suggestion. I say it is actually a photograph of a balloon flying freely in the sky back in 2014, and when I photographed it I was loving its flight and its brief moonlike quality.
I did a happy poet dance this week in celebration of the publication of My Sister Went to Live on the Moon. It was wonderful to see this poem on the Atrium site and to remember the joy of writing it. It was one of those intense writing experiences where the thoughts come tumbling out like a waterfall into a fast flowing river. The kind that has me eager to see what has been created when I can finally pause the writing. The kind that when that pause comes I feel as though I have been a conduit for the words and their journey onto the page.
My recent reflection that this might be the year I howl at full moons rather than include them in my poetry isn’t quite accurate now! I have opened the year with a moon poem and followed this up by writing another where the moon is centre stage during Kim Moore and Clare Shaw’s January Writing Hours! The one currently in the notebook is a little rough round the edges, but I reckon some tender editing and a few visits to Poetry Corner will have it seeing the light of day.
And where did it begin, this fascination with the moon? I am not entirely sure, but I think Hey Diddle Diddle plays a role here. I can picture the illustration that accompanied the nursery rhyme from a childhood book. Such merriment and joy with the cow jumping, the moon smiling, and the dish and spoon gallivanting off. Perhaps it was that very crescent moon that I once spent time trying to carve into my bedroom wall. The visual memory and the tactile memory are both still in me as an adult. Or perhaps it was Aiken Drum! I can still feel the gleeful rhythm of this dancing in me, and I know if I see a ladle I am almost guaranteed to start to sing!
Wherever it began, I am glad it has not ended. I am interested in this continued evolution and grateful for all those early songs and rhymes and stories embedded in me which have gifted me my fascination.
Here, from my first collection Magnifying Glass published by Black Eyes Publishing UK, is my setting down of the night I etched a drawing into my bedroom wall before sleep...
MY MAN IN THE MOON
Lying in bed
I picked at the anaglypta
jammed my fingernails with paper and paste.
Stroking the grainy grey-white surface
I remembered Sunday’s porridge,
how its tempting smell had lied about the taste.
I got lost in the thought that milky oats could stick paper,
that husks could be the wallpaper’s bumps.
Time passed in touching and picking.
I found friction.
Mesmerised by the heat,
I rubbed my fingertips hotter
as if it might smooth my prints.
I watched the crumb-like drop of disintegrating plaster.
Then a crescent was there
with a nose.
I smiled as I picked him out
my man in the moon.
I carved his shape with the lid of a blue biro
coloured him in with felt tip pens.
That night I slept facing the wall
ready to show my mum in the morning.
But night’s darkness stole my colours,
faded red to pink,
turned black to tabby-brown.
Mum was sparse with words.
I looked through a film of tears,
saw his sinister grin.
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