PICKINGS

Poetry from NHI publications



MOON AND SHADOW
White night: sleep eludes,
brushes lightly, darts away, a
vampish muse stirring cur-
tains and rustling the moods of
a velvet night. The moon sits
in a tree, huge and
round, lava smudged, taking its
ease, snug and secured
in place by a net of branches.

It won't move until I sleep.
Then it will siip its
moorings and float to a new
anchor low in the
morning west. There it will pale
and fade with the day's advance.

But now it waits, a
luminous coin giving the
night a texture of
thin white paint, a gauze backdrop
onto which trees lay shadows,
black puddles of Ror-
schach design on a white lawn,
puzzle shapes splashed down
from pine garland in accor-
dion widths of black crepe.
DON AMMONS
from
New Hope International Writing Vol.16 #5

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This page last updated: 24th November 2005.