Mid-February Late At Night (From Where It Goes, Deerbrook Editions) Poem by Martina Reisz Newberry

Intimidated by the glass,
I reach to touch a near-full moon
suspended on a near-black string.
It strays across tonight as I
have wandered across blank paper,
decorum over and done with.
The strange bones of my hands find their
own way (hasn't always been so) .
Outdoors, the moon lights up the dirt, MidFeb
hides behind clouds that start to spill
rain. The environment reeks of
failure and I, unmoved by its
intent, start to despise the rain.
I have stood in this place a long
time waiting for shame to produce
the wild, tender thoughts I've called up
in the past. Where is the book I've
not written? Where is the house and
the barn I saw when I slept then
wrote about when I woke? Where are
the lumbering animals that
will find their way back home and the
farm wife in her wrinkled jeans and
patterned apron? Maybe they've been
cast upward into God's shadows.
I reach to touch a sky that has
filled my life with false promises.
The old olive tree looks so cold.
Soon it will be Spring: warm, blameless.