The Moon

D.A. Cooper

August 18, 2024

With courage and a little pep,

it was one small step 

out of the ship, and they began,

for man,

a journey out into the deep,

one giant leap

into the dark; striving to find,

for mankind,

the curtain we must peer behind,

reality’s drapes, the façade

that covers up the face of God.

D.A. Cooper is a fifth-generation Houstonian and seventh-generation Texan. He recently finished his MFA at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. His poetry and translations have also appeared in Irreantum, Light, Lighten Up Online, Philosophy Now, and Witcraft.

Texas Moon?

Jeffrey L. Taylor

June 4, 2023

The moon over Texas
looks remarkably like
the moon over Nashville,
over California.

It’s the framing sky
that is unique.

The sky can mislead, but not for long.
Sierra Nevada’s summer thunderstorms
resemble Texas’s anywhere, anytime
thunderheads. Nashville’s thunderheads
are neither as tall nor as long lasting,
and mostly only when it rains.

Texas sunsets are either clear blue sky
or orange retreating up
mountains of clouds.

Nashville sunsets are layered,
shades of orange, peach, coral over blue,
crisscrossed with contrails,
sharp, windblown, diffuse.

San Francisco sunsets,
best after the sun sets:
orange glow through the Golden Gate,
intense green over the Marin Headlands
shading upwards to zenith blue.

It’s the frame that’s unique.

Jeffrey L. Taylor's first submitted poems won 1st place and runner-up in Riff Magazine's 1994 Jazz and Blues Poetry Contest.  Encouraged, he continues to write and has been published in di-vêrsé-city, The Perch, Gathering Storm Magazine, Red River Review, Illya's Honey, Enchantment of the Ordinary anthology, Texas Poetry Calendar, and The Langdon Review.  Serving as sensei (instructor) to small children and professor to graduate students has taught him humility.

Lunar Morning

Jan Seale

May 21, 2023

There it is, a morning moon

shining down on our dawn,

incorrigible in the sunrise.

It is not the evening orb 

of romance, coyotes howling, 

a benign and smiling gotcha 

to thieves and drunkards,

storyteller to boys camping.

Rather, it is the timeline bleed,

a plea for night lingering.

It calls us 250,000 miles away,

saying don’t be too sure of death,

of an eternal nightfall,

that it will be back next month,

the fates allowing, to test us 

on our ability to be startled

when hunting the morning paper,

watching the dog be relieved,

opening the gate for the worker.

And though—yes, we know it to be

only a reflection, a deflection

of our sunstar on a greater orb,

we take it into our human selves

as testimony that we made it 

another night, that shining is not

always what it appears to be,

that beauty can show up which 

we didn’t have a thing to do with,

that we have a sporting universe.

Jan Seale is the 2012 Texas Poet Laureate.  She lives "Down Among the Sheltering Palms" on the Rio Grande.

Moon is a Metaphor unto Herself

Elisa A. Garza

April 2, 2023

No simple spotlight

coaxing out moths

or hazy guidepost

among filigree clouds.

I have written you: 

pale gibbous stone

alone in blue sky,

barest opening

of crescent eye

as night begins.

Quarter half lit,

splattered, yet pure,

invisible when new,

cratered and smooth.

Wave maker, 

you are mythos, 

luna eterna, 

forever muse.

Elisa A. Garza, a native Houstonian, has published two chapbooks, Entre la Claridad (Mouthfeel Press, soon to appear in a second edition) and Familia (The Portlandia Group).  She has taught students from elementary through senior citizens in public schools, universities, and community programs.  Currently, she works as a freelance editor.

New Moon over Enchanted Rock

Lyman Grant

March 26, 2023

Lyman Grant, an ex-pat Texan living in Virginia, has recently published Symptom and Desire: New and Selected Poems.  He can be found at https://www.4doorlounge.com.

Moonset

Jesse Doiron

March 19, 2023

I was old last night. 

Older today.

Let’s be young tomorrow.

Sleep till noon, 

and spend what’s left of day

doing silly things we might regret.

Let’s waste it.

Play against the odds.

Not care about the bet.

Or better still, just stay in bed,

and laugh about spilt coffee

and the breadcrumbs on our bellies.

We’ll giggle when we lick the jelly off,

and breathe heavily between the licks.

Kiss wetly with our sticky lips.

Shade our eyes in the slanting sun,

and look for something fun 

to do at dusk.

And when the last light of the wasted day

gives way to wasteful night—

we will as well.

At least, until the moon has set,

and young tomorrow ends.

Jesse Doiron spent 13 years overseas in countries where he often felt as if he were a “thing” that had human qualities but couldn’t communicate them. He teaches college in Texas, now, to people a third his age. He still feels, often, as if he is a “thing” that has human qualities but can’t communicate them.

Full Moon First Class

Marilyn Robitaille

March 12, 2023

A full moon rises  

Way beyond Texas beautiful tonight 

Bob Dylan on the radio, cosmic waves 

He sings of tribulations, life, and love  

The moon casts sleek silvery in full sky  

Robin’s egg blue Mustang in the driveway  

Turns back to 1969 as beams strike across 

My mouth, full of peach, sweet Georgia  

Picked from the tree, saved from crows  

Full light washes over me like pearls  

My fingernails are diamonds sparkling 

My hair all highlights glistening flames   

My skin becomes translucent, glowing  

My eye beams twist and shoot strong 

At the man up there, man in the moon  

I bathe in this gentle light, breathe deep 

I’d best be sure of my brittle, human bones 

If I ignite some tryst in this lunar landscape 

We’d go salsa dancing in the light fantastic 

Cuddle up in craters, read stories by starlight  

Gaze at Jupiter while dining on delicacies  

Absolution for all my sins will land skyward 

As Lunar love grabs my hand, pulls me up 

I dare to leave all moonish doubts behind  

Nothing in the heft of normal adds this up 

I float up past trees and pastures, past the cows 

On a journey leading heavenward direct 

Into the starry, starry night so Van Gogh 

Man in the moon, now so close and smiling 

Tells me to ride the beams, don’t look down 

For sure, this is a first-class ticket  

Marilyn Robitaille recently transitioned from Tarleton State University after a forty-year career teaching English and administering international and study abroad programs. She founded Romar Press, an independent small press, with plans to focus on memoirs through sponsored creativity retreats and workshops. The first one will be held in Vermont in 2023. She has published one book of illustrated poetry Not by Design: Fifty Poems and Images, and her work has been included in multiple poetry anthologies and collections. She most recently collected, edited, and published Wine Poems, a collection of poems and related photographs all extolling the virtues and emotional associations we have with wine. She co-founded Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and co-hosted the long-running Langdon Review Weekend, a festival of the arts in Granbury, Texas. She has recently been named Managing Director of the Frazier Conservatory (opening in 2023), a planned private retreat in Stephenville, Texas, that will give special priority to non-profit organizations or events that celebrate the land, revitalization, the arts, and regional culture.

Wolf Moon

Roberta Shellum Dohse

March 5, 2023

Starched white linens, fine crystal glasses,

Candles on tables, ice sculptures at buffets,

Glass elevators, fine wood paneling,

High, wide sprawling ceilings,

Old-world elegance on display.

The Waldorf Astoria, Plaza in New York,

Bertrams, the Benson, Sir Francis Drake, and more,

Windows, verandas, folks leaning against rails,

Magic in the heavens, 

Wolf moon rising, bright as day.

Here deep in the heart of Texas, 

We gaze so intently at that glowing orb 

From the decks of the Menger leaning, watching

Naked moon’s monthly dance,

Holding old-world tales far at bay.

We sip fancy cocktails, pull wraps close 

Against the chill and Wolf Moon rising

Up o’er the horizon, high above rising. 

Even city lights dim 

And old fears invade too soon.

We turn quickly, retreat back inside, 

To the safety of this fabricated home.

Close the curtains! Shut out the light that sears 

Our hearts, shut out the wolves 

Howling now ‘neath rising moon.

Roberta Shellum Dohse hails primarily from California. After living on a farm in northern Minnesota and in Oregon, she moved to Texas in 1980, attended law school, and has practiced law in Corpus Christi since 1997. Formerly a flight instructor and a college professor, she has always loved to write.

Moon Haikus

Kathryn Jones

February 26, 2023

In the river’s bend 

Moon hangs above the Chisos

Telling ghost stories 

Blue moon at Marfa,  

Mystery lights in the desert –

Cosmic cowboys ride 

Palo Duro moon

shines high above the canyon –

lamp for the Lighthouse

Moon on the Brazos:

Canoeing by candlelight

down a blue river

The sand dollar moon

pulls at tides and scatters shells 

on Padre Island

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas. Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.

Two Moon Sutras

Vincent Hostak

February 19, 2023

i.

What is cold and spare and sadly silver 

is sumptuous to another.

That it doesn’t hold the warmth of clove and cinnamon

makes little difference to the fox.

He roots beneath my windowpane, in full moon’s light.

He wasn’t raised on figs and dates, jellies and curds,

but found the holy syrup within some bitter berry.

He’s unconcerned that the meat of a dry dead wren

makes for an angry, stubborn chew.

He may even have come for the tender cat

behind glass, once perched upon this ledge.

What’s banqueted to him is especially clear 

in a brighter light once each month,

so that even in the shadows,

he uncovers the moon’s deliciousness.

ii.

For a moment,

the clouds end all objections

and reveal a pale white skin.

The moon will dazzle you

and engulf a pastel quarry’s pores

when this is where you dwell.

While atop

a higher knot on earth’s long spine,

you observe a pebbled garden.

The jade plant faintly lit,

the sound of your voice leaving your lips

are brushed on the same cloth.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.

The Raiment of the Moon

Thomas Hemminger

February 12, 2023

Rising, magnified, on the horizon,

Veiled in vapor and thick ether,

Seemingly translucent, 

You, the watermark in azure skies.

Floating when the night is young,

Adorned in warm yellow and gold,

Romantic, your vision intoxicates

A world in love.

Against the dark of midnight

Clad in silver armor,

Watching over our sleep,

Silent sentinel, you shine. 

Before the coming of the dawn,

Emblazoned in celestial white,

Our entrusted steward of dreams,

We bid farewell for another day. 

Thomas Hemminger is an elementary music teacher living in Dallas, Texas. His personal hero is Fred Rogers, the creator of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. It was through America’s favorite “neighbor” that Thomas learned of the importance of loving others, and of giving them their own space and grace to grow.

Epiphany

John Rutherford

February 5, 2023

She shines despite the fog, the sky

turns from blue to black,

tail-lights shining on the highway,

a train stopped on the tracks.

A cloud shrouds blue

around her, against the darkening sky,

three stars shine beside, like kings,

a twinkle in the eye.

Do they bear gifts tonight?

Gold, frankincense, and myrrh,

or do they come to see

the aftermath of virgin birth? 

Tail-lights move into the distance,

in the East, three stars rejoice,

the conductor sounds his horn,

change is the moon’s silent voice.

John Rutherford is a poet writing in Beaumont, Texas. Since 2018, he has been an employee in the Department of English at Lamar University.

Birch Moon

Chris Ellery

January 29, 2023

Being a water sign (Cancer), I’m ruled 

(they say) by the moon. Maybe that’s true, 

but I can’t tell you the phase when my father died 

or when each of my children was born.

The first time I kissed my wife—I do remember that. 

The moon was full, bright and round, 

a harvest moon, streaming 

through the windshield of my old Pontiac. 

Here in America, we think of the moon as feminine—

Selene or Diana or Luna. We shoot rockets at it 

to make our point, and manly poets drink 

their inspiration in the milky light. 

It turns out the word “moon” in Arabic 

is grammatically masculine.

His light is borrowed from the feminine sun.

That’s how it always was in my marriage.

Long ago I worked a few days on a dig 

near Raqqa, Syria. We unearthed the first skull  

as a sliver of moon was rising. Was it waxing 

or waning? At the time it didn’t seem important, 

like so many things that happen under the horns of the bull. 

As we brushed away dirt from the skeletons,

we couldn’t have known that one day that place 

would become the untranquil base of the ISIS caliphate.

The year I was there I lived alone and talked every night

to the moon as it passed on the way to my home. 

Soon I grew the heart of the werewolf 

and the mind of triple-formed Hecate. 

These many years later, 

I sometimes still get a little loony 

thinking of an old car and a first kiss, of rockets 

and lunar modules and a man’s giant leap to the dust, 

of dusky, bearded men who dug the naked bones with me 

in the desert, and of joy on the face of a skull 

for seeing the moon again. 

Then I go outside and listen to the moon come rising. 

As I do this January evening, 

with the year’s first moon, birch moon, waxing,

easing through the night (he or she) along the silver river, 

whispering of magic—birth, time, kinship, strife, love, honor.

Chris Ellery is the author of Elder Tree (Lamar University Literary Press, 2016), a collection of poems based on the Celtic tree calendar. His poems have appeared recently in the anthologies A Fire to Light our Tongues, The Power of the Pause, and Lone Star Poetry. 

Remembering / Believing Moon

Jim LaVilla-Havelin

January 22, 2023

Oh, what we wouldn’t

give

for a good story

right about

now…

when she told us how she had misremembered

her journey west

the fabrication 

that is memory

we want

so much

to believe

I could tell you

about a full moon

above the Window,

Chisos Basin, Big Bend

and how that moon 

almost filled the rock-walled

vista as it rose

or over Casa Grande

if you faced the other 

way

or remember

top of the hill, Staten Island

the view across the harbor 

shining city and the big moon

balanced atop the twin towers

I could tell you

full moon, almost every month

makes an appearance over our meadow

spills milky light across the floor 

of my study and down the hall

silvers everything

would you believe me

would you need to see it

would you need to remember it

yourself

could you make it up?

Jim LaVilla-Havelin is the author of six books of poetry. His most recent, Tales from the Breakaway Republic, a chapbook, was published by Moonstone Press, Philadelphia, in May 2022. LaVilla-Havelin is the Coordinator for National Poetry Month in San Antonio.

Old Man Moon

Suzanne Morris

January 15, 2023

The moon,

his face marbled as an old man’s,

is tired of being looked at,

ready to retire for the night.

He pulls up the clouds,

tucking them all around,

pulling and tucking

pulling and tucking

a little more and

a little more until

all I can see is the

shiny pate of his bald head.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist and poet.  Her poems have appeared in online journals including Texas Poetry Assignment, New Verse News, Arts Alive San Antonio, Stone Quarterly Review, The Pine Cone Review, and The Emblazoned Soul.  She lives in Cherokee County with her husband JC and Asher the dog.

Hill Country Dusk

Milton Jordan

January 8, 2023

Once on a late September afternoon

supper finished, and the day a bit cooler

we avoided another evening’s news,

took the trail out around the near dry pond

and turned west beyond a small cedar grove

to see the sun falling below our view

as a fading sky exposed the last quarter 

of an old moon we’d seen new three weeks before.

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.