Words for the Moon

Robert Southwick Richmond

WORDS FOR THE MOON

 

I’m three

and the world’s crazy as it comes into consciousness

and my father’s crazier

(something about my penis tonight)

and I’m wandering around asleep awake

saying the moon’s

Acáshua, the jolly crescent after sunset;

The Wilderness, the halfmoon a ship scudding in the clouds;

Moon the moon’s full

and I say Moon

and get all scared and paralyzed and tingly.

 

And I grew up and saw men crunch in the moondust in Nikes,

heard an astronaut say anorthosític gabbro.

 

And I’m a grandfather with gray hair

and my legs hurt falling into sleep

and my father was just as crazy after six hundred more moons

and the moon’s still

 

Acashua

The Wilderness

Moon

  • Author: Robert Southwick Richmond (Offline Offline)
  • Published: December 31st, 2020 16:27
  • Comment from author about the poem: About 1995, recalling a memory from when I was three years old, sleeping on a screened sleeping porch in San Antonio in 1942. Acáshua was a word I invented to describe the crescent Moon, possibly shaped like a cashew nut. I could use these words to induce a state of sleep paralysis (scared and paralyzed and tingly). The astronaut was Apollo 17 geologist Harrison Schmitt.
  • Category: Unclassified
  • Views: 24
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Comments1

  • starman74

    Good work

    • Robert Southwick Richmond

      Thanks! Don't think I've had anyone respond to this poem, which comes entirely out of my personal experience a very long time ago. Hope you post some poems.



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