"Moon" by Zach Goldberg

as silent and holy as an empty church. a polished row of pews. you, moon in the sky, how do you do it? your one-handed gravity holding still the earth. astral magic trick, you newly christened old god. every family’s forgotten dance is a scar on your surface. memory like a bear trap. worldfodder magnet. wise old sledgehammer once smashed through our orbit longways. we were just a pie cooling on the galactic windowsill. now we say Light & mean your face, stretched our whole lives and once reached your shadow. pockmarked queen of all ships. all flags. can’t sing a note of worship if it doesn’t include a word of pain. the night sky’s opening bell and serene last call, nursing your craters like old wounds nursing your craters like children. your face held high and regal through eons of the same steady bruise and somehow you arrive to us with a bouquet of escape of routes. i have so much to learn from you, and not just about physics. how long did it take you to learn such luminescent confidence? your brilliant backlit halo, the way you just float and move everything, shine your own ligaments to dust. when people say they love each other to the You and back, is it about distance or about damage? about some man’s lonely footprint? and what do we know about damage next to you, anyway? all our blood clots thick with time but you have no winds to whisper your name. sometimes the healing does not rush through you. prehistoric ocean or otherwise. there are no channels you didn’t cut yourself. no way to say Over in the dead space. no one there to hear it but a silent star. and a billion other stars. ————————————– Zachary Goldberg called us from Oakland, CA. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast