Georgia Moon

Old washerwoman, rolling the waters, Holy-roller moon, beating the sands,
part the orange waters of the Coosa River with the line of your reflection--
high waters tinted with red clay.

Narcissus moon, preen your mirror image when the catfish are still
and the lake is glass.
Wash stones to a smooth white.
Polish crab shells into marble.

Light the land where we plant in your phases: the growing moon for the flower, the old of the moon for hay.
Take a roller-coaster ride
up the Blue Ridge mountains,
hide in Confederate soldiers of stone
and pine trees up on Kennesaw.

Give a maverick accent to the scene with your messenger crow
sitting on a fence rail
you’ve honed to a silver streak.

Light the broom sedge, cotton, kudzu; light the land from earth to water;
light tin roofs, tin cans of blossoms planted on porches, the moonflower vine.

Stay with us moon,
after hot summer days.
Like laying on of hands, 
send your voodoo rays
to cool our nights with incandescent light.

Watch over us, moon,
when the crops are laid by.
As you were to the Creek,
the Cherokee before,
be our Moon Mother
dressed in a gown of blue dark. 

Lay low, possum, lay low, coon, hoop snake, rabbit, snail; lay low, fox, whippoorwill. Moon will seek you out.

Maxine  Yalovitz-Blankenship