The Moon Is a Rusty Sliver In a Molten Sky, Velvet and Thick.

“The” seems so pretentious, as if the
moon could be owned,
is
a commodity, an ancient engine,
rusty and crumbling. Yet a
sliver of indignant glory glows
in the backdrop, the horizon gone dark,
a thick, close, viscous air,
molten like lava, like liquid
sky we must swim through.

Velvet clouds raft us to its bank,
and we climb ashore
thick with gratitude—another day lived.

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Barbra Nightingale’s 10th book of poetry is Spells & Other Ways of Flying (Kelsay Books, 2021). She has seven chapbooks and two other full volumes of poetry with small presses. Over 200 of her poems have appeared in national and international journals and anthologies. She is an Associate Editor with the South Florida Poetry Journal, a retired professor, and lives in Hollywood, Florida, with her two- and four-legged menagerie.