Two Moons

By Mark Belair

 

I was maybe 20
in this taut dream, not
looking back to that age or
knowing I’d returned to it, but simply

20 and walking
with a friend along
a straight stone path through
a forest, her father and my mother

trailing us
separately, and when
we reached where the forest
opened out we found the wide sky

a radiant blue, one
that held two moons—one
slightly offset behind the other—
moons that a planet, huge in the sky, flew behind

before ranging close,
a planet so green and blue
it could have been Earth, except, of course,
we were standing on that, though in my confusion I said,

That’s us!
and my friend turned
around to find both our parents—
who were alive at the time but have since died—

gone
and she cried, in grief,
Where is my father? Where is my father?
while the planet, gone winter white, rotated away.

 

 

About Author: 

Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, The Cincinnati Review, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry East and The South Carolina Review. His latest collection is Watching Ourselves (Unsolicited Press, 2017). Previous collections include Breathing Room (Aldrich Press, 2015), Night Watch (Finishing Line Press, 2013), While We’re Waiting (Aldrich Press, 2013), and Walk With Me (Parallel Press of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2012). He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize multiple times. Please visit www.markbelair.com