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Luna

By Patricia TraxlerPosted Tuesday, July 8, 2003, at 12:11 PM ET

Listen to Patricia Traxler reading this poem.

Can this be the same one that beckoned then,
dazzling, zaftig, generous, from its bright eternity?
I remember its pull on the skin, its promise—we felt it
then, called it love, or knowledge.

Tonight it looms, flat as a coin, unspent, curiously cold.
Luna. Glyphs of warning. Was it always so? How can I
know—time transfigures everything, even memory.
You. Did you think it could save us?

Summer night, a beach in Mexico, sweet rot of seaweed; I stole
from a tent, stood in the sand beneath the swollen moon;
vapor of sex rose from my skin in the chill, black air.
Between waves that lashed the land I heard my heart;
fierce, unfamiliar din of desire; knew I was changing
everything, knew the damage, yet I stayed.

Tonight a light spring rain soaks the garden past my window,
the earth all moonlit, astir with emerging crocus. I could go
out there now this minute, be in it once again, the clamor
and gnaw of growing things, stir of limbs in the wet raw air,
my skin taking it in, what remains.

But no, let it sleep, let the limbs, the longings. After a time
one becomes accustomed to a mild, dreamless expanse,
and it's possible to settle there, inviolate, for as long
as it takes. And there, the moon, aloof in its realm, see
how it endures so well without us.

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Patricia Traxler is the author of Forbidden Words (poems) and the novel Blood.
Click here to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.


To submit poetry to Slate, send up to five poems and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Robert Pinsky, Slate Magazine, Boston University, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA, 02215.
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