C. T. Suddeth

Charles Suddeth

The moon is so fat it waddles through swirling mists,

The night is ripe, afraid of nothing, afraid of no one,

Silence slithers over everything, though it is a squeaky, shrieking silence,

The breeze lifts and falls, breaking up against countless rocky shapes.

A scent of long gone fires and smoke wanders by,

As odors creep and crawl and claw over every living thing.

They flit from one shadow to the next dreary shadow,

Getting lost in the jungle of blurs and blobs and blips.

Time halts, perhaps in fear or respect or timidity,

Or perhaps knowing of the frightening fragility of life,

The wobbling of man’s brief years in the stinging sun,

This interlude we call dream time, our best time.

During a full moon, I got up in the middle of the night and wrote this. I take no blame—the shadow self within me is wholly responsible.