Moon Garden

Harvest Moon

Watching a pockmarked orange

edge westward in the sky,

I recall how I used to call the moon

my mother in my whimsical youth.

On my moon mother’s face I would

wish for love, for comfort,

intangibles longed for by most

of mankind who live a life short

of extremity. The few wishes

that came true came true for a brief

time. One harvest after another

I consumed what I had grown

in the garden of my brain, a desire,

an illusion, a phantom, which, when

plucked, tasted briefly delectable,

sweeter by far than marmalade.

                            --James Kangas

Autumn Moon

Wasn't that a garden of immortality beyond clothes,
To make up faces and places of words
amid the world and forget ourselves,
giving away for kissing, for clapping, for loving,

the outer world thrown back,
returned from years of absence
to know this place by the door,
no matter what we imagined?

                             --AE Reiff