Moonlight pours down like white honey,
you (and a legion of poets) say.
Limpid light falls like rain, bathes landscapes in generous silver.
Fatuous lies.
Night vigils have taught me the truth.
Luna, mistress of tides, great protean attractor,
draws the light to herself from her prodigal big sister.
She’s a ghost, you see,
and like a ghost, barren.
Barren creatures are hungry
for the life they cannot conceive,
ever seeking life from others.
Jealous Earth-watcher,
she hungrily stalks our living sphere,
her back to us always,
all glowing eye, winking slyly,
spirals stealthily in,
a panther toward her prey.
Earth nightly sighs satiety,
somnolent in her solar stupor;
saturated, effulgent in gifted luminance.
The afterglow oozes from the land, spills from the grasses,
the trees, everything lately sun-soaked,
and there above is Luna, ready to draw it up,
suck it all skyward in a soft gray-white mist,
a tide light enough, for once, to lift free from her fat sister.
She coaxes the excess,
licks the dribble from Earth’s chin,
steals the leftovers.
I’m no longer fooled: Moonlight is Earthlight (was Sunlight)
streaming away to a jealous scavenger;
near-nightly harvests—some larger, some smaller—
to feed a spark that can never take fire, only light a beacon.
Mother of all lighthouses,
housing light as Midas did gold,
object lesson in greed and fruitless obsession.
