"...her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage..." James Joyce, Ulysses 

Photo by Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash

Missy Moon came to an old Cheshire mere
in all her pretty finery.
Some days this boy cannot stop looking
and looking at pretty Missy Moon.
Thunder surrounds us on this high summer eve,
Missy Moon shows off her talents:
Her rounded suppleness of form
Her shades and shadows
Missy Moon swings to-and-fro
Her moonlight flows
Over a hammock made of shades and tears.
In her pretty gypsy skirt
Missy Moon, bends and rises, waxes and wanes.
She is lost and white in her heart of hearts.
And so-fully herself, we can never part.
I stand in silent awe, gazing and overhearing
This roar that lies on the other-side-of-silence.

And her shadows will never fade
This side of the grave
As she flirts with the Earth
On inauspicious nights and upon translucent nights.
This boy skips and throws himself about
Into her image on water, in and out of shadow,
Chasing the moon to her water-side.
He sought her in the water
And he sought her in the air
He sought Pretty Missy Moon everywhere:
Gasp, chase, grasp, desire, touch:
Dying on the moon’s tide, 
had too many or too much?

Beside this image of the fulsome moon
I cry for me, poor-foolish-boy,
On windy nights and when at-swoon,
I think of me with the blood-red-moon.