Doug Ramspeck: “Moon Epistles”
MOON EPISTLES
We didn’t go back for a long while,
but when we saw the old house
and the field behind the yard
bathed in a skein of dusk light,
the clouds siphoning anemic
blood into their bellies, and we heard
the hidden birds dreaming their calls
into spirals of nearly-living shapes,
and counted seven sentinels of vultures
perched in a white-oak’s limbs,
the years behind us strewn
like fish bones, I began remembering
a neighbor’s horse that got past
the fence one evening and was standing
beneath our apple tree, struggling to reach
the fruit in weak-willed light, and how,
as the moon rose, I used a stepladder to snare
one bright globe from a sagging limb,
and while you went to fetch the neighbors,
I offered the gift atop my palm.
Doug Ramspeck is the author of six poetry collections and one collection of short stories. His most recent book, Black Flowers (2018), is published by LSU Press. Four books have received awards: The Owl That Carries Us Away (G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction), Original Bodies (Michael Waters Poetry Prize), Mechanical Fireflies (Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize), and Black Tupelo Country (John Ciardi Prize for Poetry). Individual poems have appeared in journals that include Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Slate, and Georgia Review. An associate professor at The Ohio State University at Lima, Ramspeck teaches creative writing.