Blue Moon
Once, after the tail-end of a hurricane
had blown through the day – the roaring
in the trees like a passing train and the rain
berserk as it over-ran the valley – once
there was this quiet October evening,
two full moons in one month, two lives
wrought into one lifetime, the perfect
silver globe up there, a symbol of itself,
not blue, in fact, but hung in a deep
indigo sky and stained by its idiom,
the rare and common moment held
like a pause between breaths in which
we might appreciate, as if it were our own,
the life of another, and a friend’s passing settles
like a fierce wind suddenly quelled.