To The Ones Who Must Be Loved

Sample from

The Moon Does Follow Us

Daughter, think of a gray stone mirror
as far away as light travels in the time
it takes me to say “natural satellite”,
but like a bulb that reliably brightens
each time we open the door to night
it is true that the moon follows us.
Some days we trip headlong on
our own dusky shadow and see
just a sliver of her white guidance,
some days we come clear round a corner
and the night is suddenly less heavy.
There’s a physics to her place in your window
as we move at the speeds that bodies
can bear, but I see in the starry shine
of your eyes in my rear-view: that’s not
the question you asked. Some day
we’ll see the moon in the same way,
you and I, ask about what fills the sky
and neither of us will need any answer.