Verse Poem: Moon

Reading the latest post from Naturalist Weekly whom I follow at https://naturalistweekly.com/2021/11/14/poems-about-the-moon/ I thought I’d take a crack at rhyming verse. Every few lines I had to stop and search around and/or maybe rearrange things but about half came out nicely spontaneous-style.

Am never sure what to make of traditional poetry being much more a fan of spontaneous free verse and especially haiku which is a form directly derived from blending meditation with everyday perception during the long period of widespread Buddhist influence in all the major Asian nations which lasted, more or less, until the decline of the Chinese Empire in the mid 1700’s. They have had several 250 year recessions in their history and are clearly on the rise again, but whether or not Buddhist meditation will enjoy a renaissance in that cultural diaspora remains to be seen. The political classes in China especially are extremely leery of anything religious-leaning because organized religion could morph into organized political resistance to their regimes so they tend to suppress any such movements. Understandable, reasonable but also cowardly and thus wrong. Be all that as it may, the haiku style and its antecedents and derivatives tend to be less sugary and flowery. That said, much of earlier English verse – like Donne, Shakespeare or Milton for example – was far from any such.

In any case, here’s my amateur attempt at rhyming verse which tries to give a flavor, a taste, an incense whiff of Moon. Needless to say, although naturalist blog has some famous exemplars of Moon Poetry, I like mine better!

Moon

Lonely silver wanderer

Looking down from high above

Your gaze is filled with sadness

You caress strokes liquid love

.

The ocean seas obey you

The pull of your command

In dead of night they heed you

A power none can withstand

.

Microbial seas within us

Are no less bound, enthralled

Our births, deaths and emotions

All creatures great and small

.

And up in heaven above us

Far beyond our ken

The man in the moon is gazing

Into times beyond a when

.

And yet each hour you shape shift

Moving from full to none

Your beauty ever changing

Whilst silent spells are spun

.

We long to dream there with you

High above the clouds and skies

And every night we do so

Every time we close our eyes

.

For deep within is mystery

From your heavens far above

Your silver streams flow gleaming

Through dark caverns filled with love.