Reincarnation
I.
“Moonglow” resolves into tonic
way up in the blue.
II.
What if a girl, unable to sleep, leaves
her bed for the blinded window,
then spreads her fingers between
two slats, so metallic slivers angle
the waxen floor? What if her eye
follows that light stories above
to the moon’s dimpled smile,
its long, curled eyelashes waving
her hello? And, what if moments
later, the girl sees flashes, one, maybe
two at first, dangling below the moon,
orbiting down until their fluorescence
deblackens the field outside? Then,
she smiles back at the moon, blinks
her sleepy eyes twice, and in return,
the moon births again, this time hundreds,
a torrent of mini-moons streaking the sky,
funneling to the ground in seamless,
silent divots, descendant white orchids
once flowering the land. As she watches,
the girl’s dark ringlets transluce
into her pale nightgown, all glowing
in lunar light and matching her to the field
she could run through unhidden—
valanced by her siblings’ glow,
their likeness, their invitation
to flower.
III.
Go ahead, move closer,
smell the solar center
that could be you standing
tall in this line of soldiers
all wrapped by a mother’s hand,
a mother who twisted
and twirled mesh-like ribbons
in her daughter’s hair.
Don’t mind the Segueways
or wind-splashed fountains
watering the petals, the cat
on the leash won’t hiss—
this is for you, the sun warming
your shoulders, then rippling
ultraviolet off the flowers’
edge; PJ Harvey singing from
a sixth floor window—
Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water;
California poppies blooming
months too early. Give way, look
both directions, converge
across the canal where visitors spin
in sculpture. You can be that girl
again, loose and diaphanous
as you walk among these
mini-moons, be like the moon,
dendritic, remarkable, adhering
to visitors, a powdery surface
crevicing the soles of astronauts’
boots, long after
their return home.
Amy Lerman is residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College, and when she’s not teaching or grading, she writes about space a lot. Her poems have appeared and/or are forthcoming in Clementine Unbound, Slippery Elm, Ember Chasm, Rattle, Smartish Pace, Common Ground Review, Prime Number, and Solstice.