Moonlit
Bruce Colbert
Aquarius heaven’s harmonious fingers moonlit on bent and outstretched oaken arms, muscled, this painful remembrance, mother to her once suckling child, absent of all sight, vanished within the warm Gulf breeze, a ghost perhaps, this gentleness and reassurance promised, never wavering, unconditional; Hark,
Awake outside the bedroom window, an ancient trunk though weary cries out in bitter anguish, its roots grasp the Alabama sifting sand of spilled backwoods blood whose pine needles hide this soldier’s narrow path, his final escape to redemption, either charge or retreat, it matters little now, finished, this fetid brackish mud victorious as bird sentinels fall asleep
Left to overgrown solitude, gray lichen chessboard illuminated, this single Seurat night of abandon into pure abstraction, stars and lunar voices overheard, madness and then revelation of the unheralded, and with it the forest watches without judgment.
Bruce Colbert, a former journalist, is an actor and playwright in New York City, where his plays have been performed Off-Broadway, and in Toronto. He is the author of five published books including two poetry collections.