What Rough Beast | Poem for March 31, 2019

Amy Gordon
Mooning

Here in Massachusetts, Moon shimmers on the river,
silver all a-quiver, wizard’s coins.
Here moonlight falls, fills gaps between trees,
while on the way to Mexico, Moon illuminates
a family walking along a road.
First comes a small, thin, brown walnut of a man
in a holey sweater, his forehead furrowed into lines.
While he was sleeping, two men killed his brothers.
Grief slows his fingers as he unwraps
the bit of sausage for his wife and child.
Give us, this night, enough light to see
their round faces, their high cheekbones,
the small girl who walks by her mother’s side.
See how her face glows like an innocent moon.

Amy Gordon is the author of numerous books for young readers, including When JFK Was My Father (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) and Painting the Rainbow (Holiday House, 2014), both works of historical fiction haunted by helpful ghosts. Her poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Aurorean, Plum, Blue Nib, and in the anthology Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2018).

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