Hold the Moon

If I stretch up high enough, can I hold the moon?

Photo by Spencer Arquimedes on Unsplash

You’ve been sitting all night on the
astroturf, eyes tilted skyward,
skin singing with the stars.
the moon’s a crescent mark,
like the one that formed on your thumbnail
after you bashed it with the butt-end of the
staple gun your dad lent you to fix the shed.
You’re not fixing the shed.
You’re staring at the sky,
wondering:
if I stretch up high enough,
can I hold the moon?

Most of the marbled surface,
reflective, pearlescent from leftover sunlight,
is hidden tonight,
and around that little sickle,
a white halo glimmers,
like a mist of evening rain or
great gusts of smoke from the
bellows of mountains mined by moonmen
forming a shell of opal light.

You tilt your head,
and that white arc
turns into a half-smile
a mile high.
Perhaps the sky is grinning
through gritted teeth…