If No Energy Can Be Created or Destroyed
       

Before she turned the ultrasound
away, I saw my tiny unmanned satellite.

And distance. Unbridgeable.
I trusted that wand to illuminate

like a flashlight my own dear
and darkly growing, but I saw only

moonscape, basalt
without a fleck of pyrite.

Foolish to wish
and faith at the same time.

There's no pulse
to you, moon, no sea

foam from which to pearl a mortal
breath, no fins to foot

or follow. Inside, I maintain
my chronic summer, roughly

37 trillion cells, each so unknown,
it might as well be that lonely edge

where orbits slow and bodies drift
helplessly apart.

With such gravity we hold you,
moon. With such ease

you tug us into arms and swords
to fall on. A woman I don't know

wrote I feel like a walking tomb.
I'm still trying to name the way.

Perhaps this—the indistinguishable dark
where the moon still is, but has turned

its face from us.

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Copyright © 2017 Erin Rodoni All rights reserved
from A Landscape for Loss
The National Federation of State Poetry Societies
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission