Poet Laura: Moon Landing

One of the many whimsical duties of Poet Laura-ship is to advise future travelers to the moon, regarding poems that should be placed in strategic areas of both the dark and light sides of the moon. With just a brief internet search, I came across a fantastic number of poems including references to the moon, including lists of clichés about the moon. We’ve all used them in a time or two when we speak (or else they would not be cliché!), we’ve all heard them. But as poets, we also know to avoid them in our writing.  Unless, as Poet Laura, you decide to make a poem out of the clichés you are supposed to avoid.

Once in a blue moon, I howl
in the desert night, my echoes
cast beyond the moon, as I hang
it and promise you this: a love
that lasts as long as the journey
there and back again.

Do you see the cliches? Add some of your own to the list and work them into something new.

While the moon reflects the sun’s light, there is no cosmic mirror to shine her glorious image back to her. Perhaps on a clear night, the moon can catch her reflection glimmering off an ocean, or refracting off the surface of an obsidian lake. With this in mind, I’ve chosen poems for future moon travelers to tuck away that will let her know the impact she’s had on us poets.

The full moon has inspired a great many images, especially of lovers and loved ones, so on this great surface I shall recommend:

No, it was her eyes that were the color
of the moon and cheerful in the reflected
light like two bone-white plates waiting
for sliced cake on a table.

— excerpted from “The Old Woman and the Moon” by Michael Bazzett

Perfect disc of moon, huge
and simmering
low on the capital’s filthy horizon—

— excerpted from “City Moon” by Francisco Aragón

Who better than ee cummings to be placed madly, moonly on the edge between light and dark?

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

— excerpted from [love is more thicker than forget] by ee cummings

there is a
moon sole
in the blue
night
— excerpted from “Amores III” by ee cummings (public domain)

Have you ever marveled at a curvy slice of moon, lounging just over the horizon, and wonder what’s she’s thinking? What inspires that Cheshire Cat grin? Maybe something playful, but maybe destructive.

Sylvia Plath wrote, “If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression. Of something beautiful, but annihilating. Both of you are great light borrowers.”

And leave it to Pablo Neruda, who writes poignant odes to socks and soap that cause the reader to melt into appreciation for simple beauty, to come up with this descriptor for the moon, as he anticipates love’s demise: “if I look / at the crystal moon, at the red branch / of the slow autumn at my window”

I am compelled, as Poet Laura, to write a poem that I’m willing to part with, in lieu of my presence on a lunar mission.  Since lunar tourism is a little over my current paygrade, and since at the moment it’s just a flyby, not a moon landing, I’ll hang on to my poem for a while, and share it here, with you.

What secrets the moon

holds safe on the far surface
in perpetual darkness, before
she turns into light, greeted
by the sun’s brilliance; she holds
existence where there’s no life,
just elements, and revolution;
her power keeps the earth straight
on its axis, draws and releases
the tides that shape boundaries
of sea and land, records time’s
passing, a reminder to all, of all
that departs and returns again
in its proper time; of loving and
letting go, and welcoming back
and forever longing; as seasons
shift with growth, the Flower
Moon in her fullness appears
with the bounty of winter’s
seeds and springtime storms;
with death, the Cold Moon signals
darkness again; we look for the moon
each night, reminded that her phases
call us to a time for hiding, and then
shining, not on our own power
but with light gathered from the sun,
before we slip into darkness again.

—Michelle Rinaldi Ortega

Featured photo by Mislav Marohnić, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Michelle Ortega.

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Michelle Rinaldi Ortega

As a quiet child and angst-y teen, Michelle loved to read and write. When poetry found her again about fifteen years ago, the Tweetspeak community brought her multiple resources on journey, from content to courses to in-person meetups. She hosted Tweetspeak’s very first Mischief Cafe! A speech-language pathologist by day, Michelle's avocations include travel across the country and the globe, as well as digital and black and white film photography. Michelle is the author of Don't Ask Why from Seven Kitchens Press. Her microchapbook, Tissue Memory, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. You can find her work at www.michelleortegawrites.com and on IG @michellebelleslp.

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