Anna Laura Reeve

Self Portrait as the Moon (XVIII)

The second August moon is a blue moon.

Lilac-colored crape myrtle blooms wave

like baby fists above monkeygrass flower spikes.

Scorpio lust for transformation, Sagittarius lust

for understanding, meeting on the Cusp
of Revolution. The weather is turning. Winds stir

themselves, then me, cooling as the evening falls

and less of me is in shadow. I think of my daughter

as a newborn, fists waving and eyes so wide.

Imagine never having seen this, any of this.

Imagine the first time you saw a petal

from an inch away. Imagine your first time

being eaten out, your petals seen from an inch,

less than an inch. I’m the dog and the wolf.

I cannot live together, I maul myself, I sleep

and wake again green as March in August’s

woven basket, I turn my love over and over.

I’m waving my fists just like that tonight,

beneath the moon my daughter told me was going

to be blue, and super. She wanted to stay up

to see it. I said Yes, god, yes, a thousand times yes,

and while I’m burning sage and aiming a stupid

wish at the heart of the moon I will be thinking

that the moon does not consider itself lucky, nor

does it think of our twelve months as it lives

perfectly in its own orbit, on its own time. Dear

heaven, dear celestial bodies, dear earth, I only

want to live this life. I don’t want to be reborn.

Just this life, its singularities that exist in this

body, like the sense of having wanted something

unnameable, for a time, one summer, blooming

far above and to the east of it, then closing.

​​​

​

​

​

​

​

​​

How It Would Be

​

                                  My daughter breaks

through the storm door, leaving it swinging

behind her in thin winter sun, and I follow her.

We walk together on ancient asphalt, shoes

quiet, heads bowed. We talk like strangers.

I have to ask who that is, what that is, when

is that happening, and how was your day.

I know nothing, like my parents before me.

She allows it. She assents. Her nine-year-old

head coppery and beloved. She breaks the water

like a penguin hurtling ashore, bubbles trailing

behind. I know her, and yet. My questions

she endures and will endure till unforseeables.

In the meantime, she hears them kindly, or with

irritation. I no more go beneath the sea than

she will live up here with me. I did not know

how it would be.