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This poem features the harvest moon. It’s not harvest time so I’m desperately out of season, and I’m not sorry. Just listen to this wonderful reading of A Song of Thanks for the Mysteries of Physics!

Tracy V. Wilson reads; you may recognize her voice from the excellent podcast Stuff You Missed in History Class.

A Song of Thanks is part of my first poetry collection, Tell the Turning, illustrated by Lucy Bellwood, and out this fall from Bored Wolves. If you’re one of the wonderful folks who backed the book on Kickstarter in May, thank you. You made it happen.

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A Song of Thanks for the Mysteries of Physics

Good morning to the harvest moon, a ripe pear 
listing toward the west.
Yesterday you were a peach, and just as fragrant.

What do we love in a moon, especially a full one? 
A sphereish rock, shining with borrowed glamour,
patterned with shadows stretching 
thousands of miles to tug the tides.
          Our hearts, too.

Is it possible such principles as gravity 
could not be—just say it—somehow 
alive? 

And this frost-scent sunrise—is it also living? 
Let there be light! The metaphor 
by which our species participates in creation. This 
paradox of the particle and the wave. 
This world, forever observing itself into being. 

What do we love in a moon, but a brightness 
our eucharistic gaze may meet, 
consume?

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This is the latest in a series of poems from Tell the Turning read by my wonderful friends. More like this:

The Scheme of Things, read by Sus

Role Model, read by Molly Lewis

Gift, read by Juliana Finch

Every Morning, read by Lauren