RADIANCE, BY CLIF MASON |
During the brightest full moon in 133 years,
the crabapple trees in our yard cast long shadows, thin as spider legs, on snowy earth, & our naked eyes could scarcely make out the huge lunar maria. They were filled with white light, as if, volcanic, it had flowed up & burst from lunar mountains, plunging out, roiling in fire-storm, & lunging into depressions in driving, irradiant rivers & waves. We lay on our backs on the snowy driveway to steady the binoculars, & our eyes smarted, as if we'd looked straight into the noonday sun as it touched its torch to a snowbank— yes, a retina-searing cascade of sparks. Maria & craters’ names are blessings, charms: Mare Tranquillitatis, Mare Serenitatis, Tycho. Snow in the yard burned with moon dazzle, blazed around us like the light-deluged moon. |
Clif Mason lives in Bellevue, Nebraska, with his wife, a visual artist. He is the author of four collections, Knocking the Stars Senseless (Stephen F. Austin State University Press), The Book of Night & Waking (which won the Cathexis Northwest Press Chapbook Prize), Self-portraits in Which I Do Not Appear (Finishing Line Press), and From the Dead Before (Lone Willow Press). His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and he has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Rwanda, Africa.