The Hunter’s Moon 2024
I thought about you as I looked at the moon last night,
And I was so tired –
I looked at the big moon and it swallowed me up – whole
I knew, though, that as I stood in my driveway – looking up at midnight
That you would be looking up at 4 a.m.; you would be doing just this - a few hours later than me –
And then I think about time – how my time is separate now -
Separate from what Earth used to be – I levitate above it sometimes.
I think about how I may seem illuminated
And to you – full, but it is only the light we keep talking about on Monday nights -
– that of something which you would call a spark
And I would call air. Because of this I am very careful.
I’ve become untethered. And this was my goal.
I live on the moon,
It’s my home. I travel there, but I am also always here.
I am foreign while I am also home in this suit I wear,
A busy astronaut – a tired space traveler.
I have so much I want to do
But I am growing potatoes and cleaning tubes
Staring at screens – remembering childhood and doing all this fondly – which
Is only possible when there is the moon in the sky
The Hunter’s Moon
Christine Munsell © All Rights Reserved 10/17/2024
Friday 13
Five cats on my bed
I want to sleep but instead
I awake and walk to the dawn
and again there's the stray cat on my lawn.
Friday Thirteen, oh what do you mean?
The birds fly above -- I hear an upset dove -
I walk to the crepe myrtles and see blossoms,
I also see prints of opossums,
And the dew on the grass has its gleam.
Friday 13, oh Friday 13 --
Oh what does it mean?
Just a number, a day with fear on the way?
No it's silliness too.
BOO!
CKMunsell © Friday 13, September 2024
I Dreamt I Was a Butterfly
I am a thousand years old,
Thousands of thousands,
And here, tonight I awoke from a dream
Where I was a butterfly
In my dream I saw an old man
And I heard an old woman
Talking of my beauty, my freedom
I let them come near me in the garden
I spoke to them while I stayed for a long time
They did not hear me as I told them
This happiness you feel seeing me
This is the good left in your diminished world
I flew to their planted flowers, what else could I do –
I want to remind them of what joy is
And this old man and this old woman sat
On their old chairs, and they held hands
I landed on the old woman’s knee, and she laughed
I landed on the back of the old man’s hand
They sat still
And they remembered the Universe.
CK Munsell © August 5, 2024
Little Raccoons
It is the first day of the year,
And I thought I saw raccoon paw prints in my extra bedroom – on the smooth floor
I saw the prints of long animal toes.
I don’t see raccoons where I live now.
And of course these prints are inside my house –
So it has to be one of the cat’s little feet.
It is so quiet this morning,
And inside my house it is shadowy and dark
With only light coming from the computer
Clocks ticking
Time passing
Little raccoons.
CK Munsell © 2024 All Rights Reserved
When You Said
When you said
“I wish you wouldn’t have left the family the way you did,”
Among the tools and sawdust in the Texas heat of July 2024,
After you explained the numbers written on sockets,
After you told me where your mother was born: Indian Creek, Texas, and
After, you told me how your father died when you were twelve,
I was stunned, and I fought to not cry in front of you, knowing
You have been fed a story about me.
Daddy, I’ve always been
The scapegoat.
Low rank.
Blamed.
Held to a different standard.
I didn’t leave the family.
I was right there next to you yesterday.
In your shop, in the alley.
We stared at trees and talked about oaks.
I’ve been coming to see you, as I always have – sneaking around the alleyway so as to not see the people
who tell you stories that aren’t true.
I’m here, Daddy
I love you.
CKMunsell ©2024
Me as a Baby
As a baby,
Was I loved? Held?
My mother used to say
You were such a beautiful baby,
People would stop me on the street and say, “Can I hold her?”
My mother used to say
You were so sweet when you were a baby
The happiest time of my life was when you were a baby.
I don’t remember before I was about six years old.
My first memory is of my father
Telling me and my baby brother that
he and my mother were divorcing
My baby brother was crying
Because my father was crying
I don’t remember crying
My mother told me when I was about seven years old
that she wished she never had me.
She denies this.
My mother has torn me apart like this
Telling me now if I see her how horrible I am and was.
I wish I could remember when I was a baby, because I do know she loved me then.
CK Munsell © 07.06.2024 All Rights Reserved
Observance
I can’t stop my mind, and I just think of how
It seems like I will never have a friend.
I sound like a little child when I say this, self-absorbed,
Really, I just wish I had someone to read with,
To talk about things with – things that the world no longer seems to talk about
Great novels
Strange poems
Beautiful poems
And
The curiousness of the bad that people are so successful with
As their way of life
And how this way of life is
Supported
Cherished
Protected
How one has to think completely outside of everything to even imagine an existence
Without somehow being permeated by this bad.
And the beauty,
That I realize now, I will never get to see
And the beauty,
That is cut down, burned down, slaughtered, disregarded
Disrespected
Gassed
This beauty I will never get to see
As I live in this Texas desert
Working six days a week,
Just enough to pay for the little old house in which I live
On the edge of town
Just enough to pay plenty of taxes
To pave more ways
For more destruction
I do see the destruction
I can't believe it
And here I am,
With no one
To see me if I have a feeling
With no one to read a poem with.
CK Munsell © 07.05.2024 All Rights Reserved