Speed Of Light

Time Zones


Zone 1
At 3pm near Boise a truck loses most of its onions.
Waste more than accident, the frolic
of husked white orbs across the meridian
reminds me to look for the moon.
Early autumn in farm country
it finds its place over the fields an hour before
it finds its place over you. For us, this is unusual,
separated by miles and marriages
and now mountain time.
You see, we have this thing about the moon,
more like sailors on the same ship
than lovers divided by time zones, each of us
in charge of a harness, a sail, an ocean wave
like the waves on a vaudeville stage,
shaped from wood then painted blue,
one of us on each side creating
a movement that mimics the tide. It feels like cheating,
to see the moon before you, you who know
its phases so well you reintroduce me, each night,
to a heavenly body I grew bored of decades ago,
one too many listens to Pink Floyd
and one too many boys promising
to keep their hands to themselves among
the wetness of early morning grass,
the moon I shut my eyes to the same moon
you fucked and fought under in a time zone
as foreign to me as the fabled dark side
none of us will ever see.

Zone 2
You aren't the first man to remind me
about a coming lunar eclipse, whispering words
like "outer penumbra" through a phone pad.
You aren't even the first man today
to implore me to stay awake, scan the sky,
that thing about the second star to the right
and straight through til' morning,
my ship of Lost Boys you almost know about,
a half-dozen Peter Pans who keep their hands
to themselves just because you asked me to ask,
the ones who text as I wait to hear from you,
the ones who say, do you see it, the bandage
pulled off, the blood moon, the moon
whose lunar seas turn red while you sleep?
Sea of Crises, Sea of Tranquility, Ocean of Storms,
Sea that has Become Unknown, Sea of Nectar,
and we forgive each other for not being able
to ever be in the same place at the same time.


Zone 3

Without you I abandon the moon,
my memory of the eclipse I watched alone
while your dreams took you far away from me
but brought you closer with each exhale.
How I stood on the porch in all that shadow
and wished for your long fingers to know
my body so well the novelty of my small waist
would give away, in the darkness, to a new syntax
created from the way your hands would read
the Braille of all my considerable bones.
Sometimes I know when the phone will ring
but I could have never predicted this
and sometimes I study the ring around the moon.
The old myth of bad weather coming,
a sailor’s warning. The new myth
of Sisyphus, both of us pushing the moon
up the sky to only have it fall back at our feet.
What a heavenly marble, what moony white blisters
on our hands from knuckling down, wounds
that would heal if we could only stop pushing.