My Little Poem: Moon & Attention

"The Moon" by Robert Bly

Hello, Poetry Friend

I chose to learn Robert Bly’s brief poem “The Moon” by heart because of its first line:

Even when I haven’t spent the whole day writing poems, if it’s been a good day, I feel like I have. A good poetry day is a day in which I have been attentive. To the dark tree full of starlings. To the thunderclap at the end of the St. Michael prayer that shook the chapel windows. To the rain-river of bubbles coursing even now down the street.

Mary Oliver (and Lady Bird) tell us attention is love.

Love becomes poems.

And then, o my soul, I need moontime.

The Moon

After writing poems all day,
I go off to see the moon in the pines.
Far in the woods I sit down against a pine.
The moon has her porches turned to face the light,
But the deep part of her house is in the darkness.

–Robert Bly

I need pines. (I have no pines—will pecan trees do?) I need to sit outside and turn my porches to face the light.

“But”

The first time I read that last line, I read it as “But the deep part of her heart is in the darkness.” I still stumble over that word, although I like the idea that I mistook “house” for “heart.”

Words upon words, poems stacked to eagles’ eyries. O, my poetry friend. I do not tell you everything. All of this is such a smidgen of my house—merely a closet. The deep part?

Sometimes you can glimpse it when I sing.

Happy poeming!

Megan