Bill Gottlieb

Blood Moon

total lunar eclipse and the Draconid meteor shower, 3:15 am, 10.8.14

One night in the tingling AM when you were alive—cold as ground, warm as blood—we held on to each other near the bare raised beds below the house and watched meteors zipper the dark, streak to a crisp, incandescent as us. The stars were sprinkles on happy repeats of surprise. Birds dreamed of arms and trees reached out. We stayed until sated with sudden light, ignored dawn.

A little while ago I dreamed of a dragon. She, or he, or me, or we were swimming underwater in a river, swimming inimitably to the sea, swimming to elude the diminishments of men, their dissecting interests, nature indoctrinated. Tonight the Draconid meteors—Draco the dragon, serpent of tempting light—shower me with new wishes while the minutes drain the lumens of the moon…

I wish the world of your shadow would slide across my face and I would blush for an hour like this full moon, embarrassed by my monstrous joy. I wish I could bite your skin, bite it again and again, in wan devouring, a dragon consuming the moon, love eaten alive. I wish I could eclipse lack for an hour, toast to us with a white bowl of your blood, and sleep past sunrise like a baby, brain cradled in bone. I wish I could shoot to nowhere here, to you.

in a new moon
be a man
who can’t lose