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Michael Lehman

  

Never Mind the Moon

Have you listened to the way
moonlight savages a good intention?
How tips of tongues scatter in your path
pink delicate thoughts, just out of reach,
hopping, croaking in its beam,
a sudden rain of puckering frogs?

And the new moon is not a new moon at all.
It’s just the old moon
in that coarse oval shadow of infidelity.
Slipping in and out of sight,
it rubs your blood to a stutter.
You translate fractions
into puzzles of deception.

Then, the obdurate glare of a full moon
howling its ancient strategy:
The stories we tell,
the one, its many versions,
we never tell.

   

Michael Lehman teaches history and creative writing to at-risk youth in Orlando, Fla., and writes poetry and screenplays as time allows. Prior to teaching and writing, he was an Ombudsman for the Leon County Department of Growth and Environmental Management in Tallahassee, Fla.
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