All night the moon and I kept the world.
All the long night, restless and waking,
stretching and sighing, I looked
through the window,
followed the moon's track over the water,
saw the moon grow higher, smaller,
arching over white sand, the waves' cold fire,
and later still the motel watchman
returning from the beach, his shirt aglow
and his long shadow walking.
He could not know I watched him
or that to me small lights of fishing boats
far-out looked like little low stars
above the beat of surf.
All night I watched the moon go by,
beyond hate, beyond love,
until peace entered my bones
with the bone-light of its passing.
I cannot count the things I've lost,
all those bright coins that slipped away;
somewhere they may exist like bones bleached out
at the bottom of the sea, memory in windy caves.
I remember how once I heard a distant surf
deep in the heart of an empty shell.
Always, it was my own blood. The moon's blind eyes
are peaceful, and there are hymns that have no words,
just a thrum of nothingness like a sea song,
lulling and lovely and forever.
Sue Scalf
http://www.members.aol.com/poetscalf
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