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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

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.