Sometimes the moon is wheeled

from water on a leaf, and the leaf

falls with its light down the curb

where a mouse feels it like a fire

in the claw-nails. Sometimes stars

follow it down the mouse's spine.

Sometimes my grandmother

wheeled her paralyzed cousin Audra

across the long back porch, to catch

the moon rolling through clouds,

or to hear a doe and its fawn jostling

through the garden fence, to feed.

Audra would laugh. And the fawn

would caper sideways through the vines.

That was miracle enough, in moonlight.

© by Clyde Kessler.
Used with the author’s permission.