It Yet Looms Yellow in My Mind

i have never seen the moon this large

looming sweet on the horizon

like a pebble you reach to find beneath the rush of a stream

like the golden face of a clock, ticking

grown sickly pale with time

and don't we all?

but tonight i will leap and feel my foot strike earth

record with joy the tickle of the dew-wet ferns as they brush my leg

in the jumble of my memory (so much like my mother's junk drawer, all the pieces entangled)

as i breathe "i will remember this; i will remember this"

to coax my mind into releasing the needle to cut this moment into memory's fickle vinyl

and i will spin with the next step, i will note how my limbs look, bathed in the cool glow

how the yellow globe of the moon makes us here below shine strangely blue

like a mix-up occurs in the millions of miles from there to here

colour lost in the atmosphere

and i will record it all

so that years and years from now

when my body wanes thin

and my hair is wispy white

i will play it back

i will remember how the wind felt on my hands

i will recall how i was breathing hard

and how later when sprawled, exhausted

on the hill, prickly with August grass

i spoke a small prayer in gratitude

for the rising of the yellow moon