...lean down and tell me...

—Cynthia Huntington*

Tell me you’re happy—I hate to think the sky 
is full-faced with misery every 28 days. Tell me
you’re not cheese—I need more to believe in than
curdled milk hanging in our sky. Tell me you’re not

watching all I do and will send home a report card,
passing and failing grades. Tell me that facing the same 
direction night after night doesn’t bore you, you’re
not phased by it. Moon, tell me, has our word “lunacy”

left you a little scarred? It’s not fair. Tell me, when
did you first learn to reflect sunlight our way, and who
taught you how to mesmerize? Tell me something
we still haven’t learned about your secret side, or

about the Egyptians wrapping bodies we still have 
in our glimpses-of-the-past museums. Good moon, 
tell me a bedtime story tonight as you smile
steadily on rabbits ravens and raccoons asleep.

Tell me, please, let’s have the truth about that man
in you—what on earth are we supposed to tell the kids? 

*Epigraph is from “O California” in Cynthia Huntington’s poetry collection We Have Gone to the Beach (Alice James Books, 1996).

—“Oh, Moon” is from Harry Griswold’s in-progress collection (working title Report from the Front) and was republished in MacQueen’s Quinterly online (Issue 24, August 2024). An earlier version of the poem was first published in Crosswinds Poetry Journal (Volume IX, 2023).

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