Six Thirteen Fourteen (Honey Moon)
The sagging bottom of the sky tears on the mountain
and the gray spilling down ten miles away eventually
obscures the entire ridgeline. I’m out here to see the first
full moon rising on a Friday the thirteenth in June
in a hundred years, and now the horizon is missing.
In the highest branches of the old walnut tree
the leaves are flinging the last rays of sun away
with such chaotic gusto I can’t tell where the wind
is coming from. Closer to the ground the silver maple
holds its leaves out completely level, motionless
as if confirming that, somewhere, here for
the moment anyway, all is calm. The mist arrives
on slender legs ten minutes later, apologetically calm
and thinning the distance: the mountains have moved closer
like how a memory of someone far away suddenly appears
as a thing you want to climb, or a barrier on the path.
And still there is no moon. In bed before midnight
I feel a sudden rush of love for you
as if I myself had just broken through life’s haze,
glowing and spherical, irreducible, reaching without
fail. While the most I see out my window later
is a wedge of pure light through the shifting clouds
I will remember that moon and who I was suddenly,
how love shone off me from light’s source.
Translations from the English 
…”irreducible, reaching without fail.” Man, you’re on a roll, Jeff. Great piece after great piece!
Thanks Robert. Of course, you hit on the heart of this piece right away, as your comments always do.
I love your most recent Li Po – inspired poem.
Beautiful poem – the imagery at the very beginning hooked me in.
Thanks! Some part of me thinks this should be about an 8 line poem; but the part of me that was in charge tonight wanted to express the whole process, and the passage of time, in that evening’s experience. So I’m very glad you liked it enough to comment on it.
lovely.
Beautiful, Jeff. And I find the last few lines very moving. I’m glad you didn’t limit it to 8 lines for that reason alone.
Thanks, man!
Quite possibly my favourite… So glad you didn’t limit it as well. Beautiful.
Mesmerizing.
Thanks. I’m greatly appreciating the feedback on this one.
I agree with the other commenter: “glowing and spherical, irreducible, reaching without fail”
It’s as if the object or thing is in excess of itself, irreducible to any meaning we might give it other than what it reveals on its on to us rather than what we impose on it and commandeer to our gaze. Letting objects be free to express their own mystery, awaken in us only those affective relations that allow us to touch their inner being beyond the surface texture of appearance.
A.R. Ammons’s ghost walked by me on that one… His long poem Spheres is worth a look.
A book by Timothy Morton: Realist Magic, Objects, Ontology, Causality might be up your alley too.
Ah, you caught me out! Huge fan of Ammons here, both his short poems and his longer works. Archie was my mentor, both poetrically and philosophically, during my undergrad days at Cornell. I will check out the Morton book you mention as well. Thanks for commenting! I often read your posts but don’t often feel qualified to comment!
Oh, I’d love you to comment… hey, I’m not a academic, just an old frog that mingles among the young ones. Most of my thinking has been from the knocks of life, but began reading books at an early age so learned from the old school of close readers of that era (50’s and 60’s). Late in life ( 62 now!) have picked up on a lot of the current political, sociological, and philosophical work being done across the globe and use what little tools available to me from my bibliomanic reading habits to comment.
Feel free to comment anytime you want… I welcome it. Sometimes it seems people feel they don’t have anything of value to say: but to me just the knowledge that someone is thinking is worth the comment! So, yea, don’t feel you don’t have something… by you’re poetry I see very well you have a great intelligence. Take care!