My revision is quite different, but takes some of your points. It's
interesting to me, what each of us chose to delete, and to leave.
[This is, you may not know, one of a series of 'full moon' poems.]

For me, the sound of the poem, and its shape on the page, matter a great deal.

My revision:

Thunder Moon

It woke me at midnight. It touches
everything, the photographs
on the far wall, the chair
that rocked me

on my grandmother's lap, this bed
in its summer whites. It's quiet,
stealthy. If I sit still
long enough,

I can see it move. But the light
in this room does not move.
This light is a thin dry mist,
it silvers

the dog's paws, twitching
with dreams. The moon
dreams, too. It dreams
of rain.

The moon is bruised with time.
It conjures bolts of fire, it sets
the mountains aflame.
Lightning, this moon.

Yes. Lightning.


-- 


~ SB | http://www.sbpoet.com |

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 2:18 PM, Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "sharon brogan" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 1:53 PM
> Subject: Thunder Moon
>
>
>> It woke me at midnight. It's looking at me
>> from the other side of the dark window.
>> Who drummed it up? It touches everything,
>> the photographs on the far wall, the chair
>> that rocked me on my grandmother's lap,
>> this bed in its summer whites. It's quiet,
>> stealthy. If I sit still long enough,
>>
>> I can see it move. But the light in this room
>> does not move. This light is a thin and silent
>> blanket, like a dry mist, it silvers the dog's paws,
>> twitching with dreams. What does she dream?
>> Does she hear the drumming? Run, run
>> little dog. Catch that hare, take its throat
>> in your domesticated teeth.
>>
>> The moon is thinking about wildfire, it dreams
>> of rain. Does it remember the sound, the shudder,
>> of its many wounds? The moon is bruised with time.
>> The moon pulls at my loosening flesh. It reminds me
>> of my own pulse, my own blood, my own dryness.
>> It conjures bolts of fire, it sets the mountains aflame.
>> Lightening, this moon. Yes. Lightening.
>>
>>
>>
>>
> I've left only the word "Thunder," in the title, to suggest impending rain.
> That rain and the rejuvenation it symbolizes are what the speaker hopes for,
> what the reader should be made to hope for.  But the reader should be made
> to have that experience and feel that hope for h/hself - not expected to
> feel pity or affection for the speaker.  "The chair that rocked me on my
> grandmother's lap," besides being awkward, wanders pointlessly away from the
> poem's major thread of imagery.  In Stanza 2: Are there blankets that AREN'T
> "silent"?  Which metaphor for this particular moonlight, "a thin and silent
> blanket" or "a dry mist", is effective and necessary?  The switch to the dog
> and the details of its dream is, like the childhood rocking in St. 1,
> undisciplined shapelessness.  St. 3: Is the moon "thinking" and "dreaming"
> at the same time?  A double pathetic fallacy the reader will not accept;
> like the preceding "blanket" and "mist," it shows only lack of editing.  ---
>  There are a lot of "I"s and "me"s in this poem.  Use them more sparingly;
> experiment with not using them at all.  Using them excessively creates a
> "look at me" poem, inherently uninteresting.  MY loosening flesh.  MY pulse.
> MY blood.  MY dryness.  An all too familiar whiny rhetoric; all it says to
> me is "Oh, this body is such a pain" (and occasionally "and therefore I'm
> oppressed"). --- The word is "lightning."  "Lightening," getting brighter,
> used as a near-homonym for lightning, does not strike me as clever but as
> heavy-handed and ineffective.  Imagery, not wordplay, should be your sole
> tool in this poem.
>
> It wakes me at midnight. Stares
> through window, touches
> everything, the photographs
> on the far wall, grandmother's chair,
> this bed in summer whites. It's stealthy.
> If I sit long enough,
> I see it move. But the light
> in the room doesn't move; it's a dry mist,
> silvering the paws of the dog,
> who also dreams.  The moon dreams
> of meteors.  It remembers the shudder
> of many wounds.  It pulls
> at my loosening flesh, affirms my own dryness.
>