Under the Moon's Nightly ...

Under the moon's nightly increasing sliver

I paced through summer.  On our hilltop road

after the weeds are pulled, the garden hoed,

the family outing to Mosquito River,

sweet evening comes to chill me, and I shiver

and think about the cautious mouse and toad

bold in our weedy meadow, still unmowed,

soon to be house cat—stomach, brain, and liver.

Our cat's pregnant.  She needs those little things.

Deep in the grasses each doomed cricket sings

under the swelling moon, shining so sweetly

that all my constellations—heroes, kings,

Berenice's hairdo and Aquila's wings

and the Great Swan—are glittered out completely.

Richard Moore

From Word from the Hills, A Sonnet Sequence in Four
Movements, University of Georgia Press, © 1972.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

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