Watermark

Flower Moon

May Moon, Milk moon, you hide
in the rain. Meadows are wild
with lupine, columbine and phlox.
Tulips and violets open their hearts.

It is time to plant the corn. Young
squirrels practice mating in the garden,
all four in a tumble of spring, taking
turns being boy, being girl. Flower Moon,

this year you bring sorrow, and pain. Old
friends fade; old knees complain of the rain.
Corn Planting Moon, sixty times I have slept
beneath you. Milk Moon, smile on me.

Full Flower Moon. Flowers are abundant everywhere. It was also known as the Full Corn Planting Moon or the Milk Moon. Since the moon arrives at apogee less than 12 hours later, this will also be the smallest full moon of 2008. In terms of apparent size, it will appear 12.3 percent smaller than the full moon of Dec. 12.   

At Sixty

The lilac tree should have grown over the last fifteen years, but a June snow took out a third of it, and it's just now filling out again. The birches died, and have been replaced by young saplings. Spike is slipping away from me, nothing but bones and orange fur and purrs.

In this diminishing world, I hear each day of catastrophes, cyclones, earthquakes, drought and starvation; and closer to home, fires, floods, tornadoes. Extinctions, pending and past.

As a child, I knew of these only at a distance, miles away, and long ago. Now, each tragedy comes as it happens, into my living room, where I sit in comfort and watch children who are not mine buried in rubble, caught in crossfire, too starved to be afraid.

My garden stands up in the rain. The lilac is budding. Crocus and tulips decorate the neighborhood. I know this will not last. The crocus will pass, the tulips, Spike will be buried in the flowerbed. The lilac will flower and go to seed.

Now, I close my eyes and hold my cat.

stones on the ground
    the garden wall
     is falling