Friday 10 January 2020


The fiftieth Moon Prize Moon Prize on today's full moon goes to Jill Crainshaw's poem "long night moon."

NB—it is getting harder and harder to pick just one piece of writing from so many excellent ones I have the honor of posting each month. This one I just fell in love with and then stayed in love with.



long night moon

by Jill Crainshaw


i wonder
as i wander

if the owl that once in a blue moon sat
on the reformed church-eave next door
will weather a damp december eve
to wait with me and the tiny terrier for
the sleeping beauty of this solstice night
to lift her yellow-gold head up from
a wintry horizon to cast her spell
one more time upon weary waiting eyes

i wonder
as i wander

if the advent moon will whisper-sing
through vulnerable arms of unclothed trees
she who full and overflowing has
poured out light like wildflower
honey over purple mountaintops
and spilled silver tears onto
too-new burial places

i wonder
as i wander

if the owl will call out
across midwinter cedar tops—
in praise of star-fall and
long night moon
as the tiny terrier
throws her head back
and howls and howls


* * * * *

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She enjoys exploring how words give voice to unexpected ideas, insights and visions.

2 comments:

  1. Celestially beautiful--especially enticing with its glistening, gossamer narrative thread!

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  2. This needs to be put to music. It is a hymn.

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