Like many others, I get the occasional e-mail that tells me that the sender can help me find new readers for my brilliant books, millions and millions of readers. Yesterday I got a different e-mail, an old-fashioned fan letter of sorts.
The e-mail writer told me that she had selected my poem for a specific reason: "This is to let you know that as a member of a Lectio Poetry group that met this morning, I chose your poem 'The Moon Remembers' for our session. Because of the recent NASA mission to send humans farther into space than ever before, and to study the dark side of the moon, I felt fortunate to find your poem to share."
The e-mail concluded this way, "In this world of chaos, 'The Moon Remembers' gave us an hour of peace, of joy, of hope."
Wow--what writer could hope for more than that? I mean that sincerely. It is one of the reasons I write, in the hopes of bringing something positive to people.
I don't get many fan letters anymore, and the ones that I get are usually about "Heaven on Earth," perhaps my most famous poem, read on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. Yesterday's e-mail referenced "The Moon Remembers." It's a poem I barely remember writing, and at first, I wondered if she was writing to the wrong poet.
Happily, my blog answers many a question for me. I posted it in this blog post, and I'm guessing that's how the group leader found my poem. Even though it's not one of the poems I remember, I'm still happy with it.
Let me post it here again, as I also say a prayer for the Artemis Mission which returns home today:
The Moon Remembers“I sing and the moon shudders"
Li Po, “Drinking Alone by Moonlight”
The moon does not approve of elementary choir
masters who stop the rehearsal, make each quivering
child sing a solo to find the one
who is off key. The helpless moon, marooned
so far away, wishes she could offer sanctuary.
The moon knows what the choir master forgets.
The moon doesn’t understand scales or the division
of voices into the caste systems of chorus:
superior sopranos, dowdy altos, basses as the bubble
of depth holding us up, the star tenor.
The moon remembers what the choir master forgets.
The moon sees our best selves as we sing:
the lonely driver late at night, singing to stay awake,
the melancholy mother, humming Christmas carols
to cheer the babies, the desperate lover
serenading the empty window.
The moon remembers what we all forget.
The moon knows that if we believed in our songs,
strengthened our fragile voices, and sang
as if we meant it, then galaxies would blow
to bits as the universe expands.
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