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Written by Tom Sheehan
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Moongate Talisman
(or the shortstop remembers one put-out)
by Tom Sheehan
29 June moon hanging its lantern
in the tall pine tree above camp,
lighting the way lopsidedly
for those first explorers.
In the idled canoe
you pealed one breast clean,
hung your tongue like a comma
taking leave of its sentences.
This is our anniversary;
fifty years now, and I know
all the arts of the gesture,
what filled the ample airiness,
what stretched your paled shirt,
what made topographical mainstays
and folds only light could identify
in the hunkering shadows.
Perhaps somewhere now, West or East
Coast, Plains-dealt or mountain-sworn,
you feel the water work wafer skin,
push yourself against the gunnels,
go home often to that touch of air
off the water, my clumsy palm holding
a line drive in a worn and thin glove,
one moment never repeated.
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