tide-taking

How do you do, said the man on the moon, and I asked him if he had the time – he told me to sing like the stars were the key and my singing would set them in line – so I sang to the stars and I asked them to tell, through their twinkling and circling paths, if the man on the moon would come back to me soon, and they said what an odd thing to ask – so I sang and I sang, and I wailed the night through, just a tumbling voice towards the sea, and the man in the moon must have heard my sad tune, for he found me awash in the reeds – set me down in the grass with the sand under skin, ocean tickling toes on the shore, he hummed soft in my ear and told me, my dear, from a man on the moon and a girl in the sea, in the tide we cannot ask for more.

Christie Flemming