Late afternoon early winter intones silent – nature’s melancholy breathes aquiet chill adorned on the best of days by cold sunshine, on the dullest, gray shrouded landscapes, widow’s shawls.
An impatient moon rises
A sliver of unripe honeydew
Waits to be applauded
Sadness perhaps at the end of a winters’ day as if it knows it will never return; never have the chance to redeem itself in warmth. I, a traveler on its receding back am enveloped in night fall.
She sneaks like a back-door lover
Enters the room of sky
Avoids clouds that want to erase her
In the waning light I am in love with the sky, watch the change from softness to softness; light to dark, comforted by its constancy like a prayer to gods both frightening and intimate.
She rises cupping her belly
Shyly so no one sees
The pale fullness she embraces
Charlene Moskal
Charlene Stegman Moskal is 76 years old and she prefers she/her. She writes as her day/night gig without the expectation of paying the mortgage. Her first Chapbook "One Bare Foot" is published by Zeitgeist press. The second one forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.