The Third Full Moon in a Season of Four

The gathering storm eats
this true blue moon,
a dry wafer, soft hazy red
against the tin horizon.

It slips like a shining quarter
into a jukebox of cloud,
lingers gleaming in the dark coin slot
while the sad song plays.

We walk on bundled and
stiff like scarecrows into
the blustery November dusk.
We came to watch the full moon rise,

but what seems more pertinent now
is how this diaphanous disk
of sanguine floats pale
and quiet as milkweed seed

on the edge of the wind
and then is gone. There is
something rare yet relevant
in the way it disappears top first

into ambiguous lips of gray,
like the way you pull me
into your love from whatever
sorry spin my mind puts me in.

We tread our rambling path
calling owl and raven,
dizzy from the hordes
of squawking geese

hurtling above our heads.
The leaves crisp from their fall
crackle under our feet.
We have become deeply familiar

with how the rippled lake
smooths itself into evening,
how the shadowed land stretches and
yawns as the sleep of winter nears.

We wonder if the glowing gold eyes
of coyote will follow us into the dark.
There is something amazing,
something intimate and perhaps enduring

in how our footprints freeze in mud.
We have been this way a hundred times
through blistering summer heat and sudden
spring rains. Nothing ever remains,

yet this sunken moment
of our meandering, frosted in
the last blood of sunset,
glimmers as night closes in.