Always The Same Face

A Few Days after the Autumn Equinox

Full moon. Harvest moon. Late September.
She's trying to get through.

She cannot see us, we cannot see her
Completely. Only one side is ever the side

We see. However it seems, however she appears,
That is always the case, we are told.

And it is so. She cannot get through.
Her light wells, caught in a gray cocoon.

The night before, she alone so clear and far,
All at once entirely free

Of anything that obscures,
Not a cloud in the way, not a single living thing

Flying high, not a tree reaching a great dark arm
Across the bed of the sky, not a ligament

Tying her to any star. But today she is milky,
About to awaken, about to be born entire.

Someone is looking up, someone else is beginning
To say what wanted to be said, someone

Is going to stay, under the blue-black blanket,
Confiding a feeling that seeps into the day.

O blinking eye, lid of the deep, mute
Opaline drum, skin on the surface of sight—

Peel away what may, another side,
Another face unseen

Peers at a nameless where, whose time
Will come. The mother of eternity is there:

Holding a cold mirror, she turns to see
How the solar winds undoes her burning hair.

Copyright © 2005 Phillis Levin All rights reserved
from The Kenyon Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission