Moon, Evasive

The moon played hide-and-seek
tonight as if she wished to glide
meekly through the skies,
with smug self-reliance and
without impediment to her journey.
She avoided my eyes.
I spoke her name, and, so, caught in flight,
she was obliged to answer me three riddles.
I begged her, "Luna, Goddess, do not speed through this storm,
stay and give me answers for my troubles."
Yet the clouds raced, crisscrossing her face
like a veil, or a wisp,
or a shadow vacillating
with a candle’s windblown flame.

Her expression to me was a mystery
hidden as it was
behind the gray and stormy westward-moving brume.
I asked: "How many best friends can one have?"
and she responded,
"As many as it takes."

She hid behind a cloud and seemed to flee
with more determination, trying to escape the
revelations that remained my due.
I knew that soon would come the rain
and the wind and the terrible, torrential,
torment of a midnight landfall
with all the gnashing and lashing and the water’s rise.
My mind raced, raced against time, against tide, against
the steady progress of the Moon, the storm surge of time,
the pounding crescendo of water on sand, and the shriek of the wind.
Through the utter chaos that spiraled inward, I shouted to her, "Why are we here?"
She paused, awaited a moment of relative calm and slyly spoke:
"Where else should we be? " she asked,
turning to leave.

There remained a query, one last chance to inform
if she would but share. My mind had been so cluttered by this
balancing act between hot and cold, between high and low,
calm and fury, all and nothing, here and not, me and all else.
I could not imagine what remained to be asked, but still I blurted out,
"So what if I don’t know?"

"Who knows?" she asked rhetorically.
"Not I," she said, a coy smile appearing as she began
to drift off behind a cloud, obscured.

Silenced by the growing din, the ever-present,
intensified noise that enshrouds me in this life,
I remained standing—
left-behind, wet, wind-whipped,
unaware and waiting,
waiting for the eye of the storm,
so that I might lay my sight on Her face
and speak Her name again
and have a chance merely to ask,
to question once more.

Copyright 2004 by Ron Hudson

Categories: poetry