After loving my younger days spent in the sun, it seems I have become a moon worshipper now that I’ve entered senior citizenry.  I’m not saying my attraction for the sun has disappeared: just that the moon is much easier on old eyes and has more to signal. 

 

 

 Full Harvest Moon
                              They also serve who only stand and wait   –Milton
             

The world is now increasingly toxic 
in so many man-made ways. Poisoned

could be tattooed on all our foreheads
using cheap ink or sloppily cauterized

so we really get the selfie—we’re fucked.
Don’t talk of free will knowing a life

only of algorithms, systems, a matrix
in the hands of rapists to mass murderers,

their god working in mysterious ways.
Milton misleads the blind in Paradise Lost.

Those who stand and wait do not serve:
they stand and wait—often just petrified.

I have a queasy stomach and feel weary.
I think it’s best now to clean out my own

body: start fresh again with something
mine—mine as much as the state allows

that is. Wish me luck: Last night I began
a water fast with an invisible New Moon.

I know it’s there: its blackness blending in
to a dark sky until soon enough sunlight

incrementally slides across my companion’s
face; an angled crescent of light will point

to the order of things; a full Harvest Moon
will illuminate everything under its gaze,

transformation and transcendence gifted.

 

 

 

 

 

Keep writing and doing.

Peace,
Andrés Castro