This is not a love poem to you, oh moon —
you’ve had a few too many already,
and maybe I don’t appreciate how you’ve been
following me wherever I go, a fact I first noticed
on some winter night in Thief River Falls,
after my brother’s Boy Scout meeting,
where we all watched that movie about
the tiny canoe with the American Indian doll,
drifting away down a mighty river. Anyway,
I looked up at you and felt small, too aware of
the sky and how it stretched over all the places
I’d ever been and ever lived, and how you were
the same moon everywhere. So, moon, I think
we’re a little past love poems, after all this time —
don’t you? (But if you want one, I could try.)