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

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.

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