Travelers Welcome

Travelers Welcome

Thursday, August 28, 2014

UNDER A WANING

by Taylor Graham

No place to hide
from an old sliver-moon. It never
ceases from its questions.
Provocative as a lopsided smirk,
a basement creature
scuttling across the sky tonight,
bearing its hunger-tooth.
I imagine it passing over a hiker
benighted in a Sierra canyon, wishing
for home distant as a dream.
“Your own fault,” the moon says.
The human’s exasperated,
admits it’s true; maybe feels a rising
tide of panic, saline tug
of blood that proves he’s no more
special than saltwater.
The moon dangles above his short
horizon, tantalizing; gone
soon enough. How long a summer
night, with or without moon,
for a wanderer in search
of his own domicile.
A bat zigs overhead in its echo-
hunt for bugs, while
evening melts into conjecture
and myth.

2 comments:

  1. I do like both of these recent poems of yours, Taylor. There's a lot here about the sensation of being lost, isn't there? And it comes through as quite chilling in a way, oddly serene in another. There is a perspective there.

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