Artemis

Artemis

A rocket launcher fires
Helicopter miss-matched spins and falls
A Police station explodes.
She was watching the war.

I was watching the moon!
Full beast, breath high rising like a cold evaporating stone!
Who made her?
Who chiseled her face and sanded her pores?

The dreams of carpenters snorting legislation like crack?
The pointing spikes of marching idealism?
That she might be alone in her tranquility
a billion years
though the Earth may shake with a thousand nuclear clouds.
She stands watching!
Peaceful queen.
Mortified, eclipsing star.
Frowning, smiling, frigid, bound to
circle our follies and our sparkling crystalline obsidian,
our swashing careful seas

and she pulls! On the TV set
as though the stupidity offended her.
The rusty boat of the Earth heaves with her!
She pulls tighter against the shore!

The sound of her teeth
chatters,
Crumbles like chalk
on pavement
and she gurgles.
The moon shakes on the ocean!

Pale-beam
like eagle wings in the updraft
(Sand Dunes shiver smoke)
I whisper to the stars:

She's rising to the moon. She's rising to the moon.