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  • The American Poetry Review

    TWO POEMS

    Jan 01, 2021 4 minutes
    CAMPBELL MCGRATH

    The Moon

    Light delimits the darkness as snowgives shape to the silence of winter trees.Above a rooftop, the shadow of illness hoversindistinguishable from the wraithsof common chimney smoke.Strip skin from flesh, flesh from boneto behold the comical, adumbrative skeleton,rickety ladder to the ore-cask of the skull,crude keys to forgotten locks.Surely, this cannot be the answer,this calcified puzzle-works,this unmarked instant ticking to dusteven as I seek its delay, letting it crawlup a finger to my wrist, like an ant.How luxurious the world’s materials,and such illumination—moonlightrevealing every inch ofit could only be your mother’s kitchen.And the ant, laboring to cross that plateau,what part of you desires to crush it?Not the hapless thumb,not the bicep, which lacks agency,not even the mind, which admires industry,and understands harmlessness, and professesfellowship with insignificant creatures.Only the heart could be so miserly,begrudging the ant its morsel of sugar,pure and selfish as the moon.

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