o moon

Just a little late-night one, tonight, but it sings.

The way I must enter
leads through darkness to darkness—
O moon above the mountains' rim,
please shine a little farther
on my path.

—Izumi Shikibu (b. approx. 976), translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani, from The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Count of Japan (Vintage, 1990). This is believed to have been her last poem, written on her deathbed, and it makes me feel things.

the narrative burden of events

Fady Joudah is a Houston-based poet (and doctor) who I first learned about through his translations of Mahmoud Darwish—one of which I may post later in the month—and then because Brazos Bookstore, one of our favorite independent bookstores in town, always tries to highlight local authors. I picked up a copy of Joudah's 2024 poetry collection last year and was thinking about posting a couple of different poems, but then I read this earlier one on Poetry Foundation and couldn't stop thinking about it, so here we are. Still on the subject of the moon, sort of.

1.
Here, shooting stars linger
They give out
A sparkling trail like a cauterized incision

Silver, or amber
If the moon is low and rising red


2.
And the rain melts the roads
And the roads
Can rupture a spleen
Or oust a kidney stone

As for the heart
It needs a beginning
The narrative
Burden of events


3.
“Mize, zey eat mize”
The Frenchman exclaimed with a smile
“Rraized and shipped from za States”

We raise rats! I thought
That’s a lot of protein!

“Maize maize!” it was, after our chickens
Have had their fill


4.
She was the only nurse in town before the war
She spoke seven languages and died suddenly
He was a merchant
He’s a doorman now and buys us cigarettes


5.
Here we are with love pouring out of every orifice
Here they are dancing
Around the funeral pyre, the corpse in absentia


6.
One of the drivers ran over the neighbor’s ducks
The neighbor demanded compensation
For the post-traumatic stress disorder he accurately anticipates

Do you know what it’s like
To drive on roads occupied
By animal farms: you cannot tell
Who killed who or how
Many ducks were there to begin with


7.
In the morning, elephant grass moves the way
Mist is visible in the breeze but doesn’t dampen the skin


8.
Today, I yelled at three old women
Who wouldn’t stop bargaining for pills they didn’t need
One wanted extra
For her grandson who came along for the ride


9.
Like lip sores
The asphalt blisters in the rain

And the boys
Fill the holes with dirt and gravel
And broken green branches
Then wait:

No windex. No flowers or newspapers
And gratuity is appreciated


10.
“I have ants in my leg”
And “My leg went to sleep”
Are not the same thing!

The French argue
There is no sleep in a tingling numbness
The symptom of sluggish blood:

I agree. Me too my leg has been anted
And we are learning to reconcile
The dark with the electric


11.
Four days the river runs to the border
Nine days to learn it wasn’t the shape
Of your nose that gave you away
And debts are paid off in a-shelter-for-a-day

A pile of wood plus change in your pocket
Is a sack of potatoes and change in another’s


12.
No more running long or short distance
The old women
Snicker at me when I pass them by


13.
She was comatose post-partum
And the beekeeper
Bathed her in love everyday

When she recovered I gave up
What he’d promised me for the woman
Who took up nursing their newborn
Since as coincidence would have it
Her name was Om Assel — Mother of Honey


14.
The translation of a medical interview
Is not a poem to be written

Come recite a verse from childhood with me
I see you’re unable to weep, does love
Have no command over you?

The sea’s like the desert
Neither quenches the thirst


15.
Here, dry grass burns the moon
Here, a clearing of grass is a clearing of snakes


16.
And the rain has already been cleansed from the sky
The clinic is empty, soon
The earth will unseal like a jar
Harvest is the season that fills the belly


17.
Here, I ride my bicycle invisible
Except for a crescent shadow and the Milky Way
Is already past


18.
And a mirror gives the moon back to the moon
Home is an epilogue:

Which came first
Memory or words?

—Fady Joudah, "Moon Grass Rain" from The Earth in the Attic (Yale University Press, 2008).

hot as molten silver

Here is another poem about the moon. Also, cats.

The white cat is curled up in the sky
its cloudy tail drawn round its flanks.
Waking, it struts over the roofs singing
down chimneys, its claws clicking

on the roof tiles that loosen and fall.
Now it runs along the bare boughs of the oak.
Now it leaps to the beech and sharpens
its long yellow claws. Sparks fly out.

The moon is hungry and calls to be fed,
cries to come into the bedroom through
the skylight and crawl under the covers,
to curl up at your breast and purr.

The moon caterwauls on the back fence
saying I burn, I am hot as molten silver.
I am the dancer on the roof who wakes you.
Rise to me and I will melt you to silk dust.

I am the passion you have forgotten
in your long sleep, but now your bones glow
through your flesh, your eyes see in the dark.
On owl wings you will hunt through the night.

—Marge Piercy, "How the full moon wakes you," from Mars and Her Children (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), although my version is from The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2010 (Knopf, 2012).

ask the moon

I asked my wife how many poems about the moon I was allowed to post this week, and she said "all of them?" So we may have a week or so of moon poems, for obvious reasons. Since I missed yesterday, here are two.

Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.

—Linda Pastan (1932-2023), "Why Are Your Poems So Dark?" originally published in Poetry (August 2003).

*

Forgive us, we blamed you
for floods, for the flush of blood,
for men who are also wolves, even
though you could pull the tide in
by her hair, we tell everyone
we walked all over you. We
blame you for the dark, as if you had
a choice, performing just beyond
the glass, distant and adored,
near but alone, cold and unimaginable
following us home. We use you
to see our blue bodies beneath
your damp light, we let you watch,
swollen against the glass as we move
against one another like fish.

—Warsan Shire, "Bless the Moon," from Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head: Poems (Penguin Canada, 2022).

swept our hearts clean

A little devotional-ish poetry for Easter Monday. I love Joy Harjo.

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can't see, can't hear;
Can't know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

—Joy Harjo, "Eagle Poem," from In Mad Love and War (Wesleyan University Press, 1990), but in my case from a very lovely signed copy of Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: 50 Poems for 50 Years (Norton, 2023).

keep singing

My brother Pete died fifteen years ago in March, which is kind of crazy to think about. How can it have been fifteen years? How has it only been fifteen years? (Maybe less the second one, but later this month I turn 41, which is the age he was when he died, and that sure makes me feel some type of way.) Grief is a very strange thing, and sometimes poetry helps me understand it better, or at least feel less alone in something that is often isolating, even while being completely universal. Since 2012—or 2011, I guess, if you count the original day—I've been posting grief poems on April 5, the anniversary of the day we held his memorial.

This poem is from Gregory Orr's How Beautiful the Beloved, which is a whole book of perfect little gems like this one.

Grief will come to you.
Grip and cling all you want,
It makes no difference.

Catastrophe? It's just waiting to happen.
Loss? You can be certain of it.

Flow and swirl of the world.
Carried along as if by a dark current.

All you can do is keep swimming;
All you can do is keep singing.

—Gregory Orr, "Grief will come to you," from How Beautiful the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2008).

give me fire

A little Audre Lorde for a gloomy Saturday, and for my wife.

Give me fire and I will sing you morning
Finding you heart
And a birth of fruit
For you, a flame that will stay beauty
Song will take us by by the hand
And lead us back to light.

Give me fire and I will sing you evening
Asking you water
And quick breath
No farewell winds like a willow switch
Against my body
But a voice to speak
In a dark room.

—Audre Lorde (1934-1992), "A Lover's Song," from The First Cities (1968), and in this case from The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (Norton, 1997).

inside you, open

This is the very first poem in the wonderful poetryisnotaluxury book, which came out last year and is beautiful and perfect because the person or people who run that account have impeccable taste. This poem is an old favorite, and also beautiful and perfect, but I can't lie: it inevitably reminds me of two fics that thefourthvine titled from it, back in the day. In this new era of Hockey RPF-adjacent fandoms, my Sid/Geno roots go deep, and for obvious reasons, I have recently been doing quite a bit of rereading. I also just love this poem.

Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings

was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.

—Li-Young Lee, "One Heart," from Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001), and in this case also from Poetry Is Not a Luxury: Poems for All Seasons (Washington Square Press, 2025).

the same atoms

It's been a hard day, so here is a poem for that. Clint Smith simply never fails.

Some evenings, after days when the world feels
like it has poured all of its despair onto me,
when I am awash with burdens that rests atop
my body like a burlap of jostling shadows,

I find a place to watch the sun set. I dig
my feet into a soil that has rebirthed itself
a millions times over. I listen to the sound
of leaves as they decide whether or not

it is time to descend from their branches.
It is hard to describe the comfort one feels
in sitting with something you trust will always be
there, something you can count on to remain

familiar when all else seems awry. How remarkable
it is to know that so many have watched the same
sun set before you. How the wind can carry
pollen and drop it somewhere it has never been.
How the leaves have always become the soil

that then become the leaves again. How maybe
we are not so different from the leaves.
How maybe we are also always being reborn
to be something more than we once were.

How maybe that's what waking up each morning is.
A reminder that we are born
of the same atoms as every plant and bird
and mountain and ocean around us.

—Clint Smith, "For the Hardest Days," from Counting Descent (Write Bloody Publishing, 2016).

ready to start again

Hi everyone, did you know that it is somehow already April?! Yeah, I don't know where the hell this year has gone. 2026 has not been super kind to us, so far, but there have been some lights in the darkness, and poetry is always one of them for me. If you're new here (who is new here in 2026, lol), I will be posting a poem every day (more or less) from now until April 30 in celebration of National Poetry Month. This year is the 30th anniversary of NPM, which started in 1996; I started posting poems in 2007, so next year will be my 20th anniversary. Time sure does keep happening.

As I always say, I'm never exactly sure, going in, what any year's April will bring, but I hope you'll enjoy the journey with me. ♥

I saw this poem on Instagram in the middle of the month last April and immediately put it on my spreadsheet to open this year. Sometimes I can stick to a plan!

Maybe January was never meant
to be the beginning.
Maybe the year starts slowly
on purpose—
a quiet stretch,
a deep inhale,
the soft ache of waking up.

Maybe February was shaking off,
and March was the gathering
of strength—
a slow return to ourselves.

And maybe April
is when it really begins.
When the light lingers,
when our hearts beat louder,
when we are truly ready
to start again—
not because we should,
but because we're finally
warm enough to want to.

—Kaylin Weir, "April Theory," posted to Instagram on April 13, 2025.