After we stopped and left the car,
the island’s muddy fields introduced themselves
and remnants of cloth told the body farewell
as you turned to me and gently asked,
how many howls can one moon take
before I rise naked on the dark side of you?
The shadows of shameless hands explored
dark craters spinning in gold
like a lover’s ring, holy and cheap,
forcing the finger to pause, before
pointing out the star’s exhibitionists need
to hold your senses hostage.
Naked and white as Trumpeter swans
feasting on a eucharist of worms,
kneeling, you said, the mouth is shaped
by hunger’s praise of dirt, by my leg’s fields of wheat,
opened by light unzipping the world
in our farmer’s almanac of prayer.
Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His work is forthcoming in Flint Hills Review, Sugar House Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Action, Spectacle Magazine, and The Meadow. His book, Waxing the Dents, is from Brick Road Poetry Press.