This moon that circles us has greyer bark
than other moons that orbit in the dark.
Were its surface a whiter shade, the glow
might wake the forests sleeping down below,
would be a floodlight at the windowpane
of lovers argumentative again:
the ones like us who, restless in the night,
might stand and yawn before its harbor light.
I’m grateful for the dreary rind that’s there
absorbing sunlight with its surface layer
of lunar ash and dusty prints in soil.
How impractically everything must toil
to draw this pencil line of light on hair
that falls across your face – is muted there.
