I like to sleep in a dark room
and there is nowhere dark tonight
with that great vernal moon moving about the night sky.
I can almost hear her, a subtle shirring sound
like I think the workings of an old swiss watch would sound,
tiny golden gears and levers and the motion of a tiny pendulum
gliding so softly back and forth.

I can feel the tidal pull of her deep in my body,
like I imagine a pregnancy would feel
in my old woman uterus-less body,
a body that has never felt that urgent pull
of life in a moonful belly, swollen with light,
never holding an amniotic sluiced child
seconds from her rising up, born moonfaced,
howling moonsongs of all animal young.

Moon light is gliding across the water
as easily as Jesus,
what was he thinking, this moon of a Man-God,
to walk across the stormy sea
and reach out to calm
moon pulled waves under his nailed soled feet.

Moon man, man in the moon, but I know she is a woman.
Only a woman walks from window to window
in the middle of the night,
checking on her children and pulling
her light cotton robe around her shoulders,
padding on worn through soled slippers
that make the faintest shirring sound
gliding so softly against the floor.