When I lived on the moon

I mostly sat and watched.
There’s not much else to do up there.

Did you know that the earth has phases
too? Shifting from a shard of blue-green to a full

earth, depending. Once there was an eclipse
and I brought out a folding chair, put

on special glasses. I had planted
a willow and its wavy, delicate branches

split the eclipse shadow like a greenleaf
prism; a hundred hundred little eclipsing

earths dotted the ancient gray dust
beneath my feet. I thought of all

the earths before me and knew
I would need pick one to return

to and leave the rest behind. Shadows
are darker on the moon, they

creep slow and remain. Things
last; footsteps and collisions.

When I got back, you were gone.
And now when the moon is full, I strain

and try to see, to find, all
the tiny shadows of the earths,

those wavering suggestions of possibility,
to which I might have returned.

Evan James Sheldon's work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Spelk, Roanoke Review, and Poetry Super Highway, among others. He is a junior editor for F(r)iction.