AFTER A NEW MOON

Each evening you gaze in the southwest sky

as a crescent extends in argentine light.

When the moon was new, your mind was

desireless, but now both wax to the world.

While your neighbor’s field is cleared,

your corner plot is strewn with desiccated

sunflower stalks. You scrutinize the bare

apricot limbs that have never set fruit,

the wisteria that has never blossomed,

and wince, hearing how, at New Year’s,

teens bashed in a door and clubbed strangers.

Near a pond, someone kicks a dog out

of a pickup. Each second, a river edged

with ice shifts course. Last summer’s

exposed tractor tire is nearly buried

under silt. An owl lifts from a poplar,

while the moon, no, the human mind

moves from brightest bright to darkest dark.