Nicola Gill
Maybe I am the alien
And the stars are beaming messages mediated by the moon
Blinking morse code to minds muzzled and muted by logic
Lost distant cousins making long distance calls through lamp black light years
Maybe the Moon is the message
Its dapple chalk flanks spelling out a story
Rocky hieroglyphics crushed to scarred dust semaphoring blankly to milky eyes
Craters made by who knows what across epochs of efforts to reach us
Anorthocite anthologies of wasted, lost stories
Maybe the moon mourns her maleness
Forced to the feminine, sentenced to sacrifice, eternally castrated and conquered
Does she long to blaze bright vermillion or flare tangerine tongues?
Life giving and life taking, not long suffering?
Her silvered sentence heavily bourne
Maybe the moon was hoping for more
When men made their giant leap and small steps
Disturbing her maternal, mineral essence but leaving only the trails that trouble her still
With their incomprehensible mechanical meaning
Leaving as soon as they came
As fleeting and ephemeral as an eternity
Maybe
But here she hangs huge yet smaller than life and near enough to reach
Suspended in unfamiliar gravity between stony gazed saints and gawped at by sinners, further from Our Father than nature dictates
The vicar at the door smiles in welcome, humbled and delighted with his unlikely pearl
Captured and captivating inside the honeyed clasp of his church
Puzzled, impermanent, she waits on
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