Classic Poem

I moved to keep the moon
in its matrix of elmboughs un-
closeting into faint aigrettes
and stars like some thirty-ton
poised peacock or heron.

But both of them got away—
the moon into clear sky,
elm into darkness. Per-
haps, on analysis, I
was reminded of Hokusai:

some print of profiling hill,
with moon, in an interval
of catkin and twig. Like him, or
like Joshua in the vale
of Ajalon, needing a full

grasp of this opposition.
Since elms will be sawdust soon—
of the beetle that's at the heart;
and the moon's privileged, an-
cient halo could yet leap on-

-off for COLA or GASOLINE.
But I think it was merely a sane
satisfaction by contraries.
They do say only the lun-
atic stares at the bare moon.











By permission of the author.