Moonrise
I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle,
Or paring of paradisaical fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless,
Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa the mountain;
A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, entangled him, not quite utterly.
This was the prized, the desirable sight, unsought, presented so easily,
Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, eyelid and eyelid of slumber.
There is something about the sunsetting, the beginning of night, that time in the day when the moonrises and the stars come out; its the most exciting and majestic time of day, the night is canvas for dreams and fairy tales. In Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Aladin, almost every fairytale and romantic movie that the night time is the time in which the infinite can be reached. At ‘moonrise’ the anticipation of night time is at peak. There is a divide between the known, and the unknown, constant and variables; a sudden urge and pull back or hesitation is revealed through this poem and its metaphorical depiction of the moonrise, “A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, not quite utterly.” This is the grey area of day.
I’d rather the ‘moonrise’ part of a day be called the undecided, or indecisive time of day. The time of day where a person can dwindle and thin into the last chapter of the day as it comes to an end. I enjoyed this poem’s trigger for me, who doesn’t love watching the moon come up, the sky turning to a deep sorrowful and mysterious color, and best of all, who doesn’t love watching the blanket of starts that envelope the sky?
