Moving Bodies, Standing Still

a hunter’s moon, full, dips

golden below hanging giant Jupiter,

blue-green & brilliant as a lighthouse-ship,

moored & pilotless,

somehow fixed & yet always moving,

but oh the difference a half a moon’s phase makes:

as these mornings

the third quarter moon wanes slowly

still high in the black sky

over the black roof of our home,

as the speedy sky-king looms large,

still blue, but less green,

charting my course to the west

before I bear south into the cold.

hours later,

halfway down an  ill-maintained hallway,

I pause thinking:

dizzy from the recognition of perpetual motion,

I stand here still,

but we are never still;

nothing stops, speeds, slows:

all’s perspective,

a trick of the body, the bodies, the moving bodies,

standing still.

so much of the day depends upon the spin of the moon in mid-October:

the recognition of change transpired, occurring, & yet still to stir,

how much of the morning world is illuminated by things moving away?

all this in the movement of the moon, so close,& a big blue star, so far.

the eye cannot fathom distance so great as the dishonest light

from even the king of the sky,

nor nearest neighbor, orbiting constant

cutting between all other points of light,

which are not points only apparitions,

these wandering ghosts moving so quickly in their friendless fields never pausing.

let this be the lesson  of the homeward bound:

nothing is constant but spin,

even when it seems like we’re just bodies standing still

we’re careening closer & closer to some

& sliding farther & farther from others

in & out through our continuous & careless sways.

[a very rough cut, not sure about it.]