Kathy Goodkin

Two Dreams About the Moon

When the moon rode
the horizon, close

enough to sketch
each crater in high relief,

you said you thought
the world was ending.

Your car rolled toward it
like a magnet, a bad

romance. I should have told
you the first poems

came from the moon:
written to the moon,

by the light of the moon, to flesh
in the moonlight, to dark

private love, to and of the mind
and the self in the moonlight,

to loneliness, to sorrow, which expands
and transforms

in the moonlight.
Illumination against night

is both public and intimate,
the mutable edge

between known and unknown
rising and falling like breath,

like waves on the shore.
I should have said that

the moon is an axis,
common ancestor

of poetry and song.
It’s true. The first songs

were made from the world’s end
that is nightfall, exposure, shifting

shape of a pine tree.
The first poems were

someone like you,
like me, awake

and taking dictation
from the moon,

transcribing its twice-reflected light
from the water’s rippling surface.