Donald Illich

Moving Into Moonlight

At first I wanted to move elsewhere.
The moon was so cliche, a place
for poets to languidly pen verse
and arrive at endings of poems.

But I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
The city was on fire, the people
screaming in the evening.  The country
was full of aliens, probing descendants

of settlers.  Even the suburbs were filled
with no account varmints, who signed
with an “X,”shot anyone in their way.
In the moon there was no chance

for disaster.  It had shined for centuries
without stop.  It had made love to tides
with its weight for years.  I told myself
I wouldn’t write anything, that I’d settle

in a crater, that I’d dance around
that American flag.  But then I thought
of you, and how you had an apartment
on the earth, where birds told themselves

they were lucky to be there, the music
of your breath spread everywhere.
I took out my notebook and clothed
my words with your name.

(c)    Copyright 2016 by Donald Illich

Donald Illich has published poetry in journals such as the Iowa Review, Nimrod, Passages North, and Sixth Finch.  His chapbook, to be published by Finishing Line Press, is The Art of Dissolving.  (You can pre-order the chapbook here.)  He lives in Rockville, Maryland