The moon does not
want to be touched.
How do I know?
The goats this morning
bludgeon each other
and then roll in the daisies
singing their childhood songs.
The moon wants
(it has said to me)
only to go swimming,
and here is a lake
like an opal opened
from its cave.
Come closer, moon.
No gods prowl
these shores.
Nothing mudded
or poison-fleshed.
I will teach you
to float, to hold
your celestial
breath and feel
the water close
over you like an eye
closes, and everything
will go on growing
but for a moment
like the top of a breath
will pause and either
go on or perish.
RACHEL ABRAMOWITZ’s poems and reviews have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House Online, The Threepenny Review, Seneca Review, The Kenyon Review Online, Crazyhorse, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Oxford, and has taught English Literature at Barnard College in New York.
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- A Conversation - October 9, 2020
