Finding the moon

I just found out about the Knopf "Poem-a-day" mailing list, which apparently exists in April because it's National Poetry Month (incidentally it's also national grilled cheese sandwich month!). I feel like it's copping out somewhat to just pull poems from their list and post them here, as though I found this gemstone in the rough. Still, I wanted to post this one for two reasons. First, that there was a pretty interesting piece about O'Hara in the April 7 New Yorker, and second, that during our time in Belize we had an ongoing debate about where on Earth (forgive the scientific inaccuracy of that cliche) the moon was. We couldn't find it at all, any night, until finally we woke up at 5am to go diving/snorkeling way off the coast and there it was, the moon, glowing real as can be in the balmy morning. So this is in honor of that.

Avenue A

We hardly ever see the moon any more
so no wonder
it's so beautiful when we look up suddenly
and there it is gliding broken-faced over the bridges
brilliantly coursing, soft, and a cool wind fans
your hair over your forehead and your memories
of Red Grooms' locomotive landscape
I want some bourbon/you want some oranges/I love the leather
jacket Norman gave me
and the corduroy coat David
gave you, it is more mysterious than spring, the El Greco
heavens breaking open and then reassembling like lions
in a vast tragic veldt
that is far from our small selves and our temporally united
passions in the cathedral of Januaries


everything is too comprehensible
these are my delicate and caressing poems
I suppose there will be more of those others to come, as in the past
so many!
but for now the moon is revealing itself like a pearl
to my equally naked heart

--Frank O'Hara