Mary Specker Stone
Eclipse of the Super Flower Blood Moon
Not even super moon can catch
the toddler tossed in play
whose leg the hard floor fractures.
Fine China plate, broken moon
can’t sleep. Ice cream
moon melts in remorse’s heat.
Baseball moon hurls hail
from the sky. Again and again,
the scene pummels mind’s eye.
Laundry moon, white
as bleached linen, but for this
new stain in it, indelible,
these new parents think, yet
scarcely visible on a lunar scale.
We grandmothers tell
our own guilty tales: the time we
spilled scalding coffee on the baby,
or locked him in the car, or forgot
to gate the doorway, child and walker
tumbling down stairs. Bone-hooded
moon, she’s used to our errors.
The injured toddler gobbles
his banana bread. Red-eyed moon
closes one eyelid. Opens it again.
Mary Specker Stone, a mother and grandmother, is a former biomedical writer and English instructor. Her poems have been published in various journals, including Image, The Healing Art of Writing, and Gyroscope Review. Valentine’s Dinner at Wren & Wolf, her first chapbook, was published this year by Finishing Line Press. Mary lives in the Phoenix area, where she leads poetry salons and serves as a certified spiritual director.