Nick Rees Gardner

I.
This is not the moon, anthropomorphized
lazy eye drifting over my tired city:
leashed creature in the hazy milk-night town
turning into shadows. Statues
in the park, eyes cratered as moons behind
stoney clouds, depict voiceless legends.
The city moves in pools of streetlights,
warming from the ground up, radiating heat
from its own asphalt. I prefer the lamp-lit
trees in the evening, the written word blank
-eted around me, filling the hollow nook within me.

II.

This is not the moon but a glow. The feel
of tonight is opaque, unseeing windows
mirror myself positioned against
unmoving urbanity, unclouded within
the crisp dark. I form and unform
walking by. The road is a line
that no one follows. That tonight
I cross. Before I am visible
I look away. Before I am pictured.
I deny each thing before it exists.

III.

It is not only the moon that cherishes
the human soul. It is not only nature
that is still and pregnant with inspirational
silence. Arve, you mumble like a homeless woman
unencumbered of language. Olympus
is not the only dwelling of heroes
or wonders. Running my fingers over
the pocked skin of brick and mortar laid not
by gods: legends are not in these walls. My
fists are full of rubble. This is only

IV.

touch and this is not the moon I feel.
Oh, semiotician, where in language
lies the echo? Small town night when Nothing
speaks again and again without receiver.