Linda Pastan

Cosmology
February 13, 2015 Pastan Linda

Cosmology

 

Someone has spilled the moon

all over the trees;

 

someone is cutting down the trees,

branch by forked branch–

 

soon there will be nothing left

but kindling.

 

Why am I afraid of the dark

but more afraid of light, what it reveals:

 

this moonlight which lies everywhere

like a beautiful torn shroud;

 

the illumination of dreams, room

after room of dreams?

 

Is it the moon itself I fear,

in too many pieces now

 

to put back together?  Or the stars,

light years away, my voice

 

traveling towards them

in a straight trajectory?

 

I fear the earth as it warms

and freezes; I fear your arms

 

which hold me a moment

then disappear.

 

 

 

Linda Pastan was Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991-1995.  In 2003 she won the Ruth Lilly Prize for lifetime achievement. Her book, Insomnia,  came out in 2015 and A Dog Runs Through It in 2018. Almost An Elegy: New and Later Selected Poems, will be published in 2022.