Gravity Hold the Moon (poem)

 

 

 

Gravity Hold the Moon

 

Gravity hold the moon

Being that we haven’t drowned ourselves

We haven’t known

If the shift and sway of a fatter sea

Would jolt the center

Miscalculate our science

And cast you free

We fly away with our celestial tin cup

To learn whether some other moon will have us

Or at the door of Mars we importune

And that at last makes sense

A scourge of teeming humanity this pox

We have reset again reset the clock

Here we are at the culmination

And a Godly finger aims a double-layered curse

The disease and the cure

 

Each one is better than the next

The next thing is more interesting than the current thing

Is the musk ox of the northern reaches now at peace

Does he feel his time grows short

In the earth’s interior an oven’s fire burns

The smallest thing that reasons feels that we are

steaming

 

 

 

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Gravity Hold the Moon

Petal and Perfume

 

 

 

 

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Congratulations! You’ve found a bonus poem!

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The Face

 

Suppose a thing that can’t be true

A clown, feet torn away

Rolled newspapers for legs

Written in Japanese characters

A green-bound book about robbers

 

Shocks run through the earth

And typhoon rains

And shallow roots spread node by node

Shift the surface as they turn

Against a pebble of resistance

Form patterns older than the temple

 

Back-breaking stones fall one by one

Four corners build a pyramid

On yielding ground

Forces older than the culture push

Slowly down

Inexorably over time

 

Missionaries and soldiers saw the face

Smiling askew pale stone

In the fevered swelter of the tropic zone

Some image in a photograph or drawing

Became the talisman

 

And minds too new to understand

Escapees and adoptions

After all

What is the ghost

Only the thing that haunts you

 

 

 

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Find “Gravity” in The Poor Belabored Beast

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2014, 2015 Stephanie Foster)