My Little Poem: full moon

"Love Sonnet #21" by Dave Malone

photo by Ginette Talley

Hello, Poetry Friend

Dave Malone released a tiny volume of 10 Cosmic Poems: celebrating love & the solar eclipse. I bought it and immediately gravitated to the last poem, “Love Sonnet #21.” Because it doesn’t look like a sonnet. It doesn’t exactly work like a sonnet. And yet it’s a perfect sonnet.

Sonnets are love poems, and this poem is all about love, even though it’s 20 lines, instead of 14. But the phrase “full moon love” is repeated four times, and I think a poem with that much full moon deserves a few extra lines.

Each stanza rhymes in a pretty traditional sonnet format: ABBA, CDDC, EFFE, GHHG, ending with a revision of the first stanza, ABBA. Some of Malone’s rhymes are really fun: “galaxy / at me,” and “to us / I trust,” and my favorite, “moon love / you up.” Which had me giggling, imagining the speaker texting the person next to him, “Girl, U Up?”

Because this poem has a lot of sleeplessness. With time there comes a knowing of each other’s sleeplessnesses, exactly how each of you tosses or turns or fluffs the pillow or scrolls or restarts the same book started a hundred sleepless nights before.

The first and last stanzas are almost — but not quite — the same, and the dissimilarity is important. The poem moves from “you” to “me.”

LOVE SONNET #21

After all these years, after all these nights,
Only you know of sleepless, full-moon love,
Only you know the moonlight which keeps you up,
Only you know about these starry delights.

I am very much like the moon itself.
I have nothing to do, nothing to say
Except to charm you with constellation sway,
to woo you with the Milky Way's vast wealth.

You see, because, whenever you look at me,
I finally know about this full-moon love,
And how your eyes like the stars softly move,
and I know the spark in the heart of the galaxy.

For it is only your love I must prove,
When our days are long and night falls down to us.
It's then your voice in the growing dark I trust,
When the full moon has waned and is removed.

After all these years, after all these nights,
Only know know my sleepless, full-moon love,
Only you know the moonlight which keeps me up,
Only you know about these starry delights.

–Dave Malone

It’s good to know how to write a sonnet. It’s also good to know when and how to break the rules. Which way brings more love? That is the cosmic question.

Poetry Journal

• Read Malone’s poem, sit with it, journal through it. What do you notice? What puzzles you?

• Read it again, aloud. What stands out now?

• Many, many, many love poems have been written about moonlight and stars. What is one line from this one you would like to learn by heart?

• Here’s a full moon poem of mine. I invite you to write your own love poem and share with me, if you like.

Perfect Ten

Your hands shouldn’t take up so much space.
Your ring, solid enough to cut stone. Not one
errant cuticle. Penultimate thrill –
when your hands take their time.
When they falter – bliss.
Your hands hold my tears, find my forearm
in the night, reach, coax out sound
Asleep I wait and pray
where all ten fingers, insistent, spread.

–Megan Willome

Happy poeming. And rest well.

Megan