"Blood Moon, II"

Blood Moon, II


Blood moon over Little Washington
across from Wine Hill, beside
the Big Branch now a stream
a foot across, Mexican music
lilts through the screens, a cumbia,
the unmistakable blare of Mexican
brass. Crickets in the thickets
reverberate, frogs commence
to sing, the black bull lows.
The air, the same temperature
and feel of breath, is heavy
with the smell of horse.
From here
the Blue Ridge opens. The mass
on the horizon darkens down
from the mornings turquoise blush.
Over the rolling green the countryside
unfolds like a letter I've yet to write.
What lies beyond "God's bear factory"
remains unread. A rustling in the future,
a furtive slide through the branches,
into the hollows of my life. My life,
this odd juxtaposition of Mexican
brass and black bull, of greenly
blush and hot steed, the throaty
call of a dying breed, the single
joining in the chorus under eclipse.
Historic and actual. Real as the ghosts
of slaves, the haunting thumps of drum.
Fictional as treaties, lineage, or love,
to some, rendered better as story
or song, absent the fact.
Somewhere
a shadow covers this moon,
as someone's life eclipses, another's closes.
As I open out of a shadow, the great mass
on the horizon darkens into a dream.
And I walk.



8/16/08