abecedarian for the moon in the pond under my window

 

attain that soaring stargazy dream
born to spite fairytales and wells and monkeys who
could not capture you—among a
deaf embrace of night, of dark, of two lovers’
escape—I hope you have already taken
flight, a mother-of-pearl liberated from its place in the
gulf of stars. rise and sink and rise and sink and
hold yourself in your beauty, swayed by tides
I cannot hear, cannot see, cannot bring myself to believe. but do not
jest and say you are free when I see you still with the deathly
kiss of midnight upon your brow, the unwitting
loon sundering you in two—must you
meld yourself together again in its wake, not out of pity,
nor out of love? when the fairytales failed to
obtain you, restrain you, condemn you to the
power of the night, when your existence
quieted the earths and seas and heavens, when the jade
rabbit claimed you for herself—see not a
shivering porcelain bowl in the pond under my window but a being
tenderly rising like an airship above the silhouetted treeline,
unaffected by the dull falling of night or the
violent break of day. for
what else could I possibly ask? an
exiguous sky for a boundless light, like
yesterday’s dusk and tomorrow’s dawn; you, still smiling in the
zenith of the brightening sky.