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.

VISION

by Taylor Graham

Almost blind now,
he walks out under the night sky
that used to guide him through the dark
fields. The moon – closer
than it will ever be again in his lifetime;
bigger, brighter than he remembers;
a super-moon – is arcing into August,
peering down at him through oaks.
Above the house, a ghost-gold arrow.
Comet? It doesn’t move, but holds
its place as comets appear
to do, until like eyesight they’re gone.
And now the forward point extends
farther to the east, lengthening
its flight. What can this be?
He calls his wife, who gazes up to see
the TV antenna, vestigial skeleton,
almost prehistoric. Who has
a TV antenna on the roof anymore?
The old man has forgotten.
Moving above the oaks, finding gaps
to shine through, the moon
stretches that pale arrow farther
dimming as it grows, each instant,
older.