Greyhound, Sunset

So very late and very July:
a glowing sky with painted clouds,
through windows made of glass.
And then the moon, un-cooperatively, yellow.
Just like butter or the way, that once, gold was -
that time I saw it all alone, unshaped, still soft -
a metal made of some strange quality of light.

THE MOON: a hunk of rock, light-stealer, thief.
A sham, a night-dissembler. I am a mad-woman,
shouting at the blueness. It should not be yellow,
warm and sunny, constant, as we pinprick away.
You are grey and cold and lifeless.
You are dust and ash-darkness.
Your craters and your airless silence.
I am not fooled by your seas:
they are cavities in stone.

But you are some unselfconscious marvel. Reflect away.
The whole night is an absence and you won't
succumb, however borrowed the light,
however false your gladness. I will take it:
this mask, matte sun. Your unasked
for glory. However cheap to come by
(used rays, secondhand beams), they stun now
as in the day. More rare and sought perhaps,
by eyes like mine, that see the skies
only when the afternoon blaze has dimmed,
and buses carry home passengers
in boxes, with bottled breezes, late.
After summer sidewalks cool from summer rain.

CDL