I remembered when the moon will fall
quietly tracking across the sky
in its accustomed arc
then one tip of its crescent
snagging on a branch
of a hillside tree
and just like that
the inspiration for poets
and the engine of tides
will have been moored
on the horizon's edge
where it will sway in the breeze
like a great slow balloon
and children will gather round
with hands outstretched
to a clever entrepreneur
who will have secured the right
to cut up the moon into small pieces
and sell them for a dollar each
to the children who will mistake them
for candy at first
then collect and trade
pieces of the moon
like they were baseball cards
until one day all those pieces
will end up
in attics and the backs of closets,
forgotten artifacts of childhood.
About the Author: Mario Milosevic's fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in F&SF, Asimov's, California Quarterly, Tucumcari Literary Review, Black Warrior Review, Midwest Poetry Review, and many other print and online journals, as well as in the anthology Poets Against the War. He has published three collections of poems to date: Animal Life, Fantasy Life, and Love Life; and a "novel in 99–word episodes": Terrastina and Mazolli. He lives with his wife, writer Kim Antieau, in Washington’s beautiful Columbia River Gorge, where he works as a small town librarian.
Copyright © 2008 by Mario Milosevic. The poem may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.