BY LAWRENCE HALL

What Awakened You?

The bedside clock glows an hour you cannot read

Because your eyes of full of fuzzy sleep 

And your mind of half-remembered dreams

Of a better time when—but it’s slipped away

Moonlight and moonshadows silver the silence

You went to sleep in a different world

And woke up in this one—is it the same?

At magic o’clock this one seems more real

What woke you up? A breath, a sigh, a song?

What woke you up? Maybe it was love

Everybody Writes a Poem About the Moon

Everybody writes about the moon

Often trying to force a balky rhyme 

Along the continuum of spoon and croon

Which just won’t fill the bill, the quill, or the time

But the moon is there, whether we write or not

Silver and cool, beyond our scribbled praise

In contrast to the sun, golden and hot

Promoting himself through all of summer’s days

Everybody writes about the moon

Who in her being is all the rhyme we need

Does the Moon Write Back?

Sometimes I wonder: does the moon ever write

A poem about me or you?