“Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born: - you are

              my sun, my moon, and all my stars.” e.e. cummings

​

The first in America since 1866 and I’m trying
to be photographer, chasing a shadow line across
the rough plate of a bright moon. 

​

Not a photographer, I fiddle with settings,
holding steady but every photograph
a shaky snake of moons across the field. 

 

This moon boils orange and red, fully shadowed
and beneath that deep darkness – the shutter open a full
minute for each picture. 

 

The cold sets in and it’s me
and a dim moon and hands that will not still
in a world spinning dark and wild. 

 

Nearby my husband sleeps – his hand
extended, resting in the warm
afterimages of my shoulder and back. 

 

This moon moment with its amber light
better captured by NASA, by poets through the ages,
by photographers with still hands – 

 

I return to our unlit room, crawling
into the curve of warm sheets, of my husband,
of our blood heat eclipsing all.