Total Eclipse of the Harvest Moon

St. Oran's Day 2004

Last night the harvest moon
burnt full inside a total eclipse,
as if Saint Oran himself
bore on his feast night
the earth’s voyaging shade.
His boat indeed is dark
inside that pure silver,
mined from every
shores he searches within.
When I woke that harrowing
was over & the moon burnt
high above the west,
a white skull turning the
sky into wild milk, so hot
with noctilucence that it
almost hurt to stare.
Reliquary of the sea’s old
song, vox organum belling
high the narhwals’ choir,
crown for us what sails
our deepest soul, isle for isle
through all loves, all lives:
you are the music inside
the tomb, the man who
sings inside each collapsing
wave’s long boom. Moon
which wombs no-time,
toll that sea-torn note which by
rising and falling all tides
and songs and bell towers thrive.