When The Moon Shines Poem by Sally Evans

When the moon shines on the loch,
on the great and strange Loch Awe,
it is white gold, is rippled,
patched quincunxes shore to shore.
Rhyme comes unbidden.
Fear could follow calm, a liaison
strange as the over-sweetness of poison.

And when the moon picks out the cut
in the Pass of Brander - a shiver
down anyone's spine at the sight,
where perhaps a sleek otter hurries
through no man's land, where stone
is more likely to slide and move, than any life.

Where danger is multiplied
in emptiness of response,
no shelter, cover or support
as an unsympathetic owl
flies by unstirred, the cat
keeps aloof and apart, fortunately.

from Anderson's Piano sequence