Judy Brackett

SYZYGY: THE FULL LONG NIGHTS MOON

Farmer yoked to                            plow to horse to                      straight furrows that
run from barn to                           drying-up creek                       Barefoot girl old
dog at her side                               leans against a                         leaning fence     The
three a kind of                               Earth drawn to this                 strange moon in dry
December air

This is the night                      the world might end
the night the world                        should end and the                  wobbly Earth shrink
from light to shade                         to darkest night                       evaporate
There’ll be no pain                        no sorrow not                          a whimper just
momentary                                    clarity then                              oblivion     

Jupiter that
old bully pulls                               and everything                         begins to end
The farmer dead                            to the world cries                     out from his green
dream     The horse in                   his cheerless stall                     shuffles nickers
a low response

The girl smells wood                    smoke tastes honey                  The dog quivers
gives a silent                                 cold howl lies at                       her feet and they
watch the Full Long                     Nights Moon turn fire             red and the flames
flicker and die                              swallowing the                         night and soon all 
the lights go out.

Judy Brackett lives in a small town in the California foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada. Her poems have appeared in California Fire & Water, Epoch, The Maine Review, Commonweal, Midwest Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Subtropics, Cultural Weekly, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. She is a member of The Community of Writers. Her poetry chapbook, Flat Water: Nebraska Poems, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019.