Beaver Moon Eclipse

I will love you
long after this soft pearl of a moon
is swallowed by the shadow of the earth.
Look how she mouths the luster
taking her time
as if it’s been 600 years
waiting for this kiss.

I will love you
until all the stars
fall out of Orion’s sword
and slide to the floor
of eternity.
Even as we sleep
galaxies collide
and form new stars.
Even as I move
from one end of the night
to the other
changes transpire
at the molecular level
—are they atoms or stars
that careen through our darknesses?

You have made what came before
impossible.
You have made a different future
possible.
See how the light returns!
Even as we breathe here
this one small planet
races around the only sun
we’ve ever known
with unfathomable speed
and yet here
at the center
all is calm
all is bright.

Gesture

Squinting at the tiny lines
I load the narrow needle with the dog’s insulin.
Locked up and dreaming of her bygone kingdom
she is a fragile princess I am required to torture
at regular intervals.
I remind myself to concentrate
but I don’t know what I’m doing.
How these delicate systems work
is beyond my ken. She grows thin.
I pull up the scruff of her neck
make a pocket with my thumb
and fire. Today it feels like I missed
but I can’t correct my mistake.
How will she suffer now?
I try to make it up to her with lovies.
Look, I say, we dodged the dragon
but she wants a porch in the sun
a deer leg to gnaw
a soft patch of rug on a wooden floor.
All the creature comforts I so easily divested
myself of are now her sorrows.
We look at each other
two aging gals shuffling forward
hand in paw.
The sun pushes through the frosty clouds.
I open the blinds.
What else can I do?

Sandra S. McRae writes about nature and domestic complexities, the political and the divine, food, and hunger of all kinds. Her poetry books include all the way to just about there (FutureCycle Press) and The Magic Rectangle (Folded Word), and her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She also co-authored the bestselling cookbook Weber’s Big Book of Grilling (Chronicle). Sandra has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is an editor at Bristlecone, a poetry journal of the Mountain West. Sandra teaches writing at the University of Denver’s University College and Red Rocks Community College. Visit Sandra at www.WordsRunTogether.com.

Image: NertyS, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons