Full Moon at Eighty
BY JIM MOORE
When I look up, there it is.
I can see that it does not need us,
but does not mind that we need it.
I think I am supposed to stop trying to be someone.
Be everyone instead, it says. I shine
on everyone, it says: can you do the same
in your waning? If I am to live at all,
it will have to be in this way: knowing
I am going away and shining, even so,
guided by the light of knowing that.
Where I Live Now
BY JIM MOORE
(Spoleto)
Mostly, the people are old. Mostly,
they have lived through a war or two.
At least nine earthquakes.
Parents long dead, of course.
When they stop to smell a flower,
it’s not the first. When they look down
at the uneven road, they slow but don’t stop.
12 bells ring at noon from three churches,
all at once. It is too much sometimes,
now that life is so close to the place
where life comes to an end.
They go on, my old people.
They gave up long ago,
but they go on.
Swallows and bats, wild asparagus
when the season is right.
Every night the moon
as if never seen before, as naked
and shining as on the last night
before the plague began.
What is most beautiful is what ruins us
for anything else. The first forsythia in bloom.
Bonnard
BY JIM MOORE
“The Almond Trees in Blossom” should be everyone’s last painting.
The patches of blue and green on the ground, little after thoughts.
The shaking glory of the white petals.
Everyone’s last painting should have a bit of sky poking through.
It should always be spring one last time.
Try to remember there will be a last time to try
to give back to the world everything
it has given you. Everyone should stand quietly
under their last almond tree. It is the end
of a spring day, shadows growing long,
blossoms darkening.