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.