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Today's poem is by Dolores Hayden

Local Knowledge

Sap moon, grass moon, milk moon, rose moon—
from March to June, the almanac
weds farms to skies. I'm new in Maine.

July—two soda fountain stools,
green orbs of leatherette and chrome,
swing round, he talks of molecules

and stars. Come hay moon songs pulse from
the neon jukebox, planets pattern
everything from shirts to gum.

By August zany drive-in plots
mix up the spheres. Space aliens
make love and war, earth astronauts

blast laser guns at my tanned feet
extended toward a corn moon sky
above his borrowed car's back seat.

Fruit moon, I never figure out
when he decides we're through. I pack
for school, I ask around about

his newest flame. The hunter's moon,
the beaver moon, they're all the same
to me, until one afternoon,

below a crescent on the wane,
I recognize hay moons, corn moons
still shine on him in Deer Isle, Maine,

and all the everyday things worn
and sung and touched and heard and seen.
He can't recall the summer that I mean.



Copyright © 2004 Dolores Hayden All rights reserved
from American Yard
David Robert Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

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