THE WHITE-BONE MOON


Memory is the lilt of time 
between seconds, the space we crave 
to enter, like a cat who twists her web of bones, 
casts off her skeleton like moonlight,
flouting time, to travel through narrow space.

                                I’m thinking of the time
I slid like snow falling into my 
dogs open, backyard grave.
My pink boots withered to black
and darkness closed in on me like panic. But I could see
my breath, which the thirty below temperature 
had transformed into something 
solid.
      At eight years old I held time in my fist 
like a stopped heart.
                     Twelve years later
this moment 
fell into a poem and I became 
that cat, twisting its bones, 
dreaming them hollow.

                     The moon 
glints, her beam a wand which makes 
time invisible, so 
we too may shed ourselves, and 
enter into that equivocal space between.