Without fail, monthly, the full moon sheds
her inky cloak of night and stars
and slips a leg and then the rest into the lake,
her cool fire subtracted from the sky.
She leaves the nights more lonely, barren.
But her life is not extinguished,
merely hidden, recovering, re-energizing.
She must withdraw from sight,
make herself desirable, let her belly be lush and fertile again
so she may breath passions onto the world, be
drunk with the reckless, raucous, ribald dance of life.
She rolls overhead, silver ship of the night sky,
goddess of the oestrus cycle,
of “οἶστρος”, sexual desire.
We await her return with blood singing,
Lashed by desires we do not comprehend.
She reappears, rising from the ocean’s depths,
playing her cool blue light on
the backs of cavorting whales,
pulling ten million squid to the surface,
sending flying fish soaring across the waves,
driving life into a frenzy of mating and
feasting and dying around the world.
Then she sways seductively up rivers,
up small streams and higher on rocky slopes until,
seeded into billions of tiny droplets
on every living thing,
she leaps back into the sky, resplendent,
and spreads her seductive waves of
gravity across the face of the world.
Women sigh in their sleep and stir,
their skin flushed from the friction of moonlight,
in sleep, they squeeze hands slowly between thighs,
their water nature filling the night air,
sending out a call of longing and promises.
Men grow restless, querulous with each other,
hungers grow, urgency grabs hearts
stirred by the slender fingers of cold blue gravity.
We are pulled out out into the night,
into the dark where truth and secrets can be shared,
and the urge to feel the
welcoming touch of another,
the healing intimacy of “I see you,”
becomes overwhelming, a need
unspoken, demanding completion,
reflecting in a happy joining,
the hidden language of the moon.
HemmingPlay 
As a woman, the reoccurring thought throughout was, ahh to have that power or to accept having such power. The moon is an amazing gift. To compare the moon’s language to that of human desire created a worthy journey for us.
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Ah, but you do have that power, all of you. And it’s wonderful. It’s tricky, though. It’s like any creative gift — like being able to play the cello, or somehow understand astrophysics. There’s a certain amount of humility required to say, both, ‘yes I have this gift,’ and also, ‘but I didn’t do anything to earn it’: it’s just there. The cellist still has to practice 6 hours a day to bring that gift to full flower. It’s not free. Neither is sex. The idea I was playing with in the poem has to do with the involuntary nature of forces that act upon us. We’re propelled, with only partial self-control, to do things that have larger, often obscured purposes that Nature imposes. And we need to have a sense of humor about that, learn to accept and enjoy it, but also to not take it all that seriously. There are more important things and besides, we’re just along for the great Cosmic ride, too.
We could have a theological discussion sometime about this, too. Are these physical qualities a spark of the Divine, or something a notch or two below that? But the fatal mistake people make is to let too much pride in, and that leads to manipulations and abuses of power. We are surrounded by a culture of sexiness, and it’s presented as the epitome of everything we should be and desire. (Never mind that it’s usually used mainly to sell products.) But our sexual beings are unearned gifts, things we can appreciate and protect and enjoy. But we also need to be realistic about this and realize they’re temporary. Other things will happen to us and take on greater importance (we raise children, deal with illness, face many other challenges) and the earlier physical drives really don’t capture the higher things of the spirit we’re capable of. But they do shove us down the road where we have all manner of unintended consequences to deal with. And it’s there that we discover real life.
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Reading your response makes me want to strive for more, so much more within my thinking and my writing. A cup of coffee and about five hours might come close to the thoughtful response you and your comment deserves. Thank you..
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This was beautiful. So many wonderful images – really enjoyed reading this.
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Thank you. 🙂 This started out as something else but something was not right. I got some feedback from a friend and she said it seemed a little too dry. I let that percolate for a day or two and then this popped out.
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