Poem

Moon Solitary

Who seeks to climb beyond his range
By setting foot to moss-grown themes?
What! No rhymes for ‘orbiting dust heap’?
Enough! You praise me past all compass.

I’ve stared unblinking ages
At the sapphire blaze of earth
And never known its heat.
I’m but a bright loiterer, pocked secondary;
Such cosmic nothingness
A shadow may devour me entire.

I’d trade an eon of these weary rounds
To feel, just once, what I call forth –
A seething tide, to pull me from the strand,
Then fling me to the cold salt crest;
I’d join the sublunary fellowship
Of lovers, madmen,
Owls, dogs, and secret thrush,
Who wrestle poems from empty wind
And visions from the shore of night.

I’d rather set my heart aflame
And sing one hour in the self born light
Than for all eternity reflect another’s fire.

From Cat up a Tree by Anne Isaacs. . . Good huh? (She has some great cat poems in this anthology, as well.)