A Muse Bouche

Here’s something new from me…a sort of hybrid haibun, published by The Fortnightly Review, the revived 19th-century literary magazine founded by Anthony Trollope. I hope it conveys somewhat my recent experience.

Dispatch from the Moon: Soft Landing

Haiku moon tonight
I lie awake until dawn
counting syllables

Lunar Codex: A time capsule of art headed to the Moon. Collected from writers, musicians, filmmakers, models, designers, and artisans from 262 countries and territories and 149 Indigenous nations from all across the planet, it includes one of my poems. Our works miniaturized, engraved on nickel-plated nanofiche placed aboard lunar landers as private payload, artifacts meant to bear witness to the human spirit and the culture of our time leaving a different kind of footprint, one that will last forever on the face of the Moon.

On a nighttime walk, our son’s partner from the Scottish Highlands asks if the sky is lit by light pollution or the Moon. She likes the glow, to be able to see the clouds at night. “It’s like our sky when there’s a full Moon,” she says. And I wonder. I can always see the clouds at night here.

(full poem here)