Lunar Eclipse by Linda Bierds

[View this email on a browser] [Forward to a friend] [facebook-icon] [tumblr-icon] [twitter-icon] December 21, 2016 [Lunar Eclipse] [Linda Bierds] Mt. Rainier National Park We are standing on the access road to Paradise. Seven miles from the gates. We are standing on the centerline, the moon on our faces, the mountain at our backs. Were it less than full, we might see, in its northwest sector, the Land of Snow and the Ocean of Storms. Because it is full, we can see, just over our shoulders, how the Ramparts climb up toward the glaciers. We might see near the Sea of Showers, the dark-floored crater of Plato. How the glaciers, just over our shoulders— Pyramid, Kautz, Nisqually—shine. How the spreading bedrock shines. As if we are starting again, we have placed—there—on the moon’s widening shadow Kepler, Copernicus, Archimedes, Aristoteles. And opened a Sea of Fertility. A Sea of Nectar. As if we imagine a harvest. No sound it seems, on the slopes, in the firs. Nothing hoots. Nothing calves. Although through Nisqually’s steep moraine, rocks must be shifting, grasses cinching their eternal grip. Look, in the blackness, how the moon’s rim glows, like a ring from an ancient astrolabe. We are standing in the roadway. There is nothing on our faces but the glow of refracted dust. At our backs, the mountain is shifting, aligning itself with the passing hours. First ice. Then stone. Then the ice-green grasses. We are standing on the centerline aligning ourselves with the earth. We are standing on the access road as if we imagine an eternal grip. Look—they are rotating on, now. Already a pale crescent spreads past the Known Sea and the Muir Snowfields— as if we are starting… —past the Trail of Shadows, the ice-green grasses, the seas of nectar, the craters of rest, the gardens of nothing but passing hours. [Like this on Facebook] [Share via Twitter] Copyright © 2016 by Linda Bierds. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 21, 2016, this poem was commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Imagine Your Parks grant. [illustration] About This Poem “Several years ago, I watched a lunar eclipse from Mt. Rainier National Park. This summer, as I hiked deep into the ash-gray trough that once held the Paradise glacier, I thought of the mountain/moon exchange that lies at the heart of the poem.” —Linda Bierds Linda Bierds is the author of Roget’s Illusion (Marian Wood Books/G. P. Putnam’s, 2014). She teaches at the University of Washington and lives on Bainbridge Island. [more-at-poets] Poetry by Bierds [Roget's Illusion] (Marian Wood Books/G. P. Putnam’s, 2014) "The Wind and the Other Moon" by Robert Gregory [read-more] "Untitled [There, by the crescent moon, the shark]" by Shido [read-more] "Submarine Mountains" by Cale Young Rice [read-more] Imagine Our Parks with Poems This poem was commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Imagine Your Parks grant. Imagine Your Parks grants celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service and the 50th anniversary of the NEA by supporting projects that use the arts to engage people with the memorable places and landscapes of the National Park System in 2016. [Read more poems about our National Parks.] [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo] Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org]. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here]. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038 From Our Sponsors [Advertisement]