Selene Sings the Phases of the Moon by Alison Hurwitz

A Pantoum

New Moon

Begin the chant in darkness, birth and death’s unanswered question,

Find incipience and dissolution in a cleft of waiting, where

you harness metamorphosis, reined by umbilical pulse,

guided by the beat of blood, contraction and release.

Waxing Crescent

Find incipience and dissolution in a cleft of waiting, where

the word of you, bright-sliced waxen seal to pull the tides,

guided by the beat of blood, contraction and release,

traces space between the stars, the place of all beginning.

First Quarter

The word of you, bright-sliced waxen seal to pull the tides–

sing your part-illuminated manuscript, the curve of its expanse. Calligraphy

traces space between the stars, the place of all beginning.

Grow to gift migration, sand-hoppers, limpets, longing.

Waxing Gibbous

Sing your part: illuminated manuscript, the curve of its expanse. Calligraphy

comes full circle- you, who guide the tides, who make trees weep with light.

Grow to gift migration, sand-hoppers, limpets, longing.

All so thirsty for your rise, a yearning only slaked with liquid silver.

Full Moon

Come full circle: you, who guide the tides, who make trees weep with light.

Here, the night is argent etched, each outline winged with petrel flight.

All so thirsty for your rise, a yearning only slaked with liquid silver.

Conduct your time in turning skies, learn it as the pupil of an owl’s eye.

Waning Gibbous

Here, the night is argent etched, each outline winged with petrel flight.

See how you must meet your shadow self, find reunion in your path.

Conduct your time in turning skies, learn it as the pupil of an owl’s eye.

Chord of this diminishing: soon you will dusk your cadence back to womb.

Third Quarter

See how you must meet your shadow self, find reunion in your path:

The shape that has within it every aspect, each its own penumbra.

Chord of this diminishing: soon you will dusk your cadence back to womb.

Now you, descending, wrap illumination in its shroud.

Waning Crescent

The shape that has within it every aspect, each its own penumbra.

You harness metamorphosis, reined by umbilical pulse.

Now you, descending, wrap illumination in its shroud.

Begin the chant in darkness, birth and death’s unanswered question.