Please see here for the background to these poems.
New moon
1
No one runs wild at the new moon,
at no-moon, the pedant's moon. We retreat
into slaty concealment. Just a matter of time,
we tell ourselves. The streetlamp's rays
head into the dark, then give up.
Waxing crescent
2
It's still with the stern ones
of mountaintop and desert,
with uncluttered horizons
and no one calling them home.
3
Like a golden boat
it holds its unlit bulk;
room perhaps for one more?
I am cold, ill, expected at home.
None of our windows face west.
With a last glance
I go in to dream of the voyage.
4
A moth climbs a glass sky
and covers it tenderly
with ragged wings.
5
Askew in a vapour trail
it peers at the departing crowd.
In a clear steeped-blue sky
it meets us at the door.
6
Checking the lock, I look up.
It scans me from where it reclines,
So many shades on one half-rim.
First quarter
7
It's higher now, dipped almost halfway
in dry pink-white. I look up
and almost spin off the earth.
In its crazed blotches
a map invites completion.
8
It doesn't so much shine
as illuminate itself.
A textbook's half-hemisphere
placed in the sky, bold as a fact.
Waxing gibbous
9
It first appears in day:
it can't help itself.
By dark it's crossed the road
and pours forth unhazed:
hello from the universe!
10
It's a smudge, a day-cloud lost in night.
Then a smoke-edged patch clears
and it floats like a vision,
hinting at fuller roundness.
11
It's gone for a sail behind an old wool blanket.
I glimpse it through moth-holes. It's day back there:
the sky is powder blue, the clouds are white
and it glides with a beige halo to light its way.
12
It's on top of the window frame. I watch till my neck hurts.
When you're above the roofs, I say,
while we sleep, keep giving us light.
13
I get my binoculars
and check how things are today, though I know
no one's there to find one day different from another,
and anyone who was would be lost in those inkspill seas.
14
The clouds blur it just enough
that I can't tell it's not quite round.
It shimmers like its own reflection.
Full moon
15
After a fog of worried surprise
I see it unhindered. Gold-faced, it pours forth
panefuls of silver, as if to say, "See,
here is true fullness, true clarity,
now, and before you, and after you too."
16
It's hiding behind things and changing them:
glass bricks to soap bubbles,
municipal trees to a misty wood.
Down the block, it blends in with the streetlamps.
At the church, it re-tops the steeple.
Waning gibbous
17
Glossy as a new nickel, though worn at the edge,
it drops into a slot from time to time,
then, dues paid, comes out the other side.
18
It's not to be looked away from,
this white flame above the horizon.
I lose track of how long I've been resting here,
filled with its cooling blaze.
19
This side of the month, it's a secret
for foxes, nightworkers,
those wakened by headaches or fear;
it greets us in a rust-coloured housecoat.
Jot down its message, it's illegible by dawn.
20
It holds its forehead in a cupped right hand.
Its uncompletable face floats at the margin.
It has a temperature, a rosy sheen.
I'm surprised when it doesn't slide from my gaze.
21
At two in the morning, half turned to its pillow,
it signals through quivering leaves.
By 9 am, it's cloud-coloured,
but given away by its too-round curve
and too-perfect dissolving.
22
Don't stay up late. You won't see it.
Catch it with your coffee the next day,
slipped between two scraps of cloud,
its bulge somehow less than a crescent.
Third quarter
23
A shadow blurs the edge
that marks off its last quarter. It stands high
and shines as it can in the sunlight.
Eternal, it mimics a vapour trail.
24
No one teaches you half. You take it in at once,
crossing the park on this bright morning. Stop to look,
and it hurtles into a cloud till you trudge on.
Waning crescent
25
Its centre half-sunken,
the lightest scoop from its edge
above the silent houses
on the cold walk to the station,
mine for the looking
until the train swallows me.
26
It's come round to meet me on this white morning.
For a moment I lose it, and can't be sure
whether clouds have covered it, or the sun wiped it out.
27
Soon to be flattened
by fluorescent reflections, it seizes the chance
to display, to whoever's awake
and not otherwise busy, its subtle solidity,
its perfect pivoting into darkness.
28
After two cloudy days, it appears in a maze of branches,
a curve caressing a darkened cheek,
an opening quotation mark
to punctuate the morning.
29
It does not know
our morning clouds build a stave for its clef.
It does not know
our winter trees have made it a net.
It does not know
that I, on checking the calendar,
see in its thinness a valediction.
The morning after the eclipse
29 ½
It lingers, looks down at us knowingly.
It blushes, but not with shame.