John Barrale
Moon Island
Under a furnace sun, where the rocks are too hot to touch,
and the crone-like shrubs hide their bitter leaves
behind walls of thorn, water was the moon’s gift.
By luck, there were caves, mysterious places,
temple-like and roofed in pale stone. What rain fell
seeped down and gathered there in shimmering pools
the First Ones called moon eyes. At winter’s end,
when the caves were full, water poured
from wound-like springs onto hillside terraces.
There, Fertility, the moon’s promiscuous wife,
gave her lovers grapes and figs. Wildflowers,
their perfume hers, tumbled down the hills.
Mornings drifted in from the sea like a song.
Under summer’s green bowers, when sons came home
from the sea, fathers roasted goats over open-pit fires
and poured red wine into inscribed clay cups,
the wine from jugs kept cool in deep, bell-like wells.
And I, who never came home, would go there if I could.
———————————————————————
Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets
Skip to content
The Red Wheelbarrow Poets 