The cabbage knows
only one thing—to head.
The moon looks like a cabbage
or a head but it isn’t either.
Moonlight veils my window
unwelcome down the walls,
too much and in the wrong place.
Dripping sounds keep me awake.
There is no way to contain
moonlight or mop it up.
It pulls on the near skin of the earth,
stretches and makes waves.
I dream here is a huge baby,
round faced, that I have to care for.
I do, and it gets smaller. The moon
is often a metaphor–breast, eye,
fingernail, communion wafer,
scab–yet it is still just the moon.
Mary Jean Port is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her chapbook of poems,“The Truth About Water,” was published in 2009 by Finishing Line Press. She recently had poems published on Indolent Press’ poem-a-day site, “What Rough Beast,” in “Leaping Clear,” and in “ellipsis….” She has work forthcoming from “The Halcyone.” She lives in Minneapolis, where she taught at The Loft Literary Center for twenty years.
