Santa Fe Poetry Broadside
Issue #22/23, October, 2001 :   Constancy of the Moon -- -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10  11 -12
      The Year We Uninvented the Rose -- -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -12 -13 -14
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Judyth Hill

                 

Half Way There

I have questions about the moon.
Questions about distance and what is really luminous.

That evening in the cafe,
how the raspberries stained the white, white cloth, and we rubbed in salt
to lift the stain.
The coffee so dark, I got drunk on the essence of night.
It was bitter and delicious.

September moon rose inside me,
and also not inside me. Demi moon
filling the room with the scent of fresh linen, shaken out,
shaken out, I opened then, a Stargazer Lily, shed pollen and seedling,
daughter of Suzanne,
who had to die
and I had to let her.

The flavor of this moon is that whole year in reverse, a lack,
presence of absent mother
Dark sky, part moon, part mother:
the exact same as light cream, sugar substitute.

Just 1/2 a moon, 1/2 a moon, 1/2 a moon onward
Pointing, I said, I'll always say,
Look at the
Ring around the
and I cried a river then, the Pecos, the Puerco, the dream blue Navesink,
the banks of which I was born by,

Small, I drank my milky demitasse of coffee,
sweetened, motzah crumbled in,
though I already
pointed at moons,

not through a cafe window,
the table's cloth crimson with the leakage of sweet fruit,
but through a child's eyes,
raised over a porcelain cup,
part way full.



Copyright © 2001 Judyth Hill.

About the poet.

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Issue #22/23, October, 2001 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.