At some point or another -
With lasso or paintbrush
Or ladder or camera or pen.
She rises silent and enormous
Only if you have no idea what a galleon looks like.
Though sometimes clouds look like galleons, with great sails unfurled against a starry sky,
And she sits like an orb on the prow);
A lamp, slowly held aloft
By invisible and kindly giants;
A smaller, cooler, second sun;
One solemn, unblinking eye.
She arcs over us unnoticed
Haunts the day-sky pale
And bounds unremarkably from east to west
Folding and unfolding
Like pages of the calendar.
Until, laden with strawberries or wolves or blood or harvest,
She looms, full, into view,
And we stand slack
Heartstruck by her magnificence.
Jevver see such a moon?
-Never, we reply, gathering our weak snares.
And they fail, they fail, they have always failed
But, darn it, we're going to try.
In two weeks when she is laughable
- A lopsided grin, a skinny banana, a toenail -
We won't even notice her tucked in the corner of the sky.
But tonight we linger over fence posts
Peer through branches
Race down the street to the end, for a better view
To hold her, to keep her, to make her stay.
We all try to capture her,
At some point or another.
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