Blue Moon

So, there's this full moon, way up high in the sky, because it's just after midnight here. And the sky is clear. Really clear. So this moon is just pouring light down from the sky. It's so bright that even in the country where I live, far from the city lights, you can still see only a handful of stars.

But creeping toward me, along the southern horizon, there is a long blanket of white clouds, covering Shawnee as what's left of Hurricane Issac blows over the southern states and into the Midwest. And all these airplanes, with their red and white blinking lights, keep skirting this massive storm, flying along its edge. One after the other, passing by every three minutes, always from west to east.

And I am sitting out here, finishing another night of grading essays for this online college that I work for, beneath this full August moon, and I just know there is some traveler in one of those airplanes, looking down upon those snowy clouds that are being bathed from above by milky lunar light, and he's thinking, God that's beautiful, as the storm crawls slowly over Arkansas.

I am watching him as he watches the storm, that is getting close enough so that I can just now begin to see the clouds that are breaking up along its northern edge, over the bean fields where crickets and katydids keep me company.

There's Not Much Time

This waxing crescent moon is sinking on the western horizon,
And I have just a few more seconds to tell you about it,
You people of the future.

In my day, people drove cars to work and received direct deposits into their checking accounts,
But the moon, as far as I understand the situation,
Was as much the same for me as it is for you.

There it goes: Sliding beneath the tops of the trees, at the far end of the bean fields.
It's molten iron tip, disappearing somewhere over the Pacific,
Mesmerizing the Californians, perhaps.

But it is gone, now, so I suppose I will return to my living room,
Where I will watch a video on Netflix before I retire for the night,
And rested, begin another day to end in the same manner.

I hope this gives you some perspective.
We were here, too.
And it is not an altogether bad place to live,

For a while.

Embarras

When someone says to me,
"The current is always moving: It's never the same river,"
I always think to myself:
"Yeah, right on!"
But then I become aware of how quickly things are always changing,
And I want to take it back.

Or sometimes,
A hot, dry season ends in storms,
And I find myself feeling thankful that time has passed,
Welcoming the late-summer monsoons that bring
The cooler autumn weather
And shorter afternoons.

Where I come from,
The rivers run shallow and slow,
Filled with log jambs that wash upon the shallow islands and sandy banks.
But the dead limbs do not stop the water
From flowing into the Wabash, Ohio, and Mississippi,
Draining Missouri all the way to Helena.

They have moved the mountains past Memphis,
Depositing them in the Pass a Loutre
Along one of three branches.
The mountains will stand for a little while longer,
But rivers never cease to be,
Nor change.

Mountains in the haboobs of Phoenix,
Mountains in the black beaches of Punaluu,
Mountains in the salt flats of Utah,
Mountains in the red clays of Lexington,
Mountains in the muddy waters of the Bonpas,
Where the catfish feed on chicken livers, stink-bait, and bits of soap.

But for all my trepidation I have never stopped the current:
The water passes over me as it does all things.
Rain washes their dust into her mouth;
She speaks them into the sea.
The mountain is never the same mountain,
Nor the river the same river.

Word

When you put it onto paper,
It becomes true.

When you voice it in the courtroom,
You can be killed for it.

When you type it on the screen,
Decisions will have to be made.

When you hide it in your brain,
It never was,

No matter what it is.