all this love-talk about the moon

what, then, are all the wolves howling about?

smell of moon-mold and green cheese,

two harbingers of decay and sickness?

a deadly shard of a broken star?

the moon hangs in heaven like the damned,

showing just enough light to look cadaverous.

what a fright, that ancient face

simultaneously surprised and disparaging

as if I’ve done something unexpectedly,

something for which I should be ashamed

or sorry. old man moon looks down on us,

year after year, with that same expression

frozen on his pitted, pock-marked face,

his moon-mouth locked in a silent shriek.

first he’s full-faced, waning to a mere sliver

then disappearing for a while; pallid,

sometimes sallow or jaundiced, even orange.

no wonder dogs and foxes yowl and scream.

half a billion years ago, if humans saw

this monster when he was a lot closer,

they’d have spent their nights awake.

John M. Davis lives in Visalia, California.  His work has appeared in numerous journals, including The Comstock Review, Gyroscope, Curating Alexandria, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Bloodroot Literary Magazine.   "The Mojave", a chapbook, was published by the Dallas Community Poets.