This month's Moon Prize, the 112th, goes to Joan Leotta's poem "Feather to Stone." It speaks to my own inner feather.


Feather to Stone

by Joan Leotta


You see me as a feather,
as I ride the breeze
down to you, gently
swaying.
You say you
do not even feel me
when I land on your heart,
softly.
Your hardness
deflects my tiny
self.
When breeze calls again,
I float away, weeping for you.
You cannot move.
Your stone self is
stuck
in equally hard earth,
incapable
of understanding that my
very softness,
my lightness, is my
strength.
You are forgiven.


* * * * *

"Feather to Stone" was first published in Peacock Poetry in 2019, and is now also published in Joan Leotta's chapbook, Feathers on Stone, out from Main Street Rag in 2022.
https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/feathers-on-stone-joan-leotta/

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She performs tales featuring food, family, and strong women. Internationally published, she’s a 2021 and 2022 Pushcart nominee, a Best of the Net 2022 nominee, and a 2022 runner-up in the Robert Frost Competition. Her essays, poems, and fiction are in Ekphrastic Review, When Women Write, The Lake, Verse Visual, Verse Virtual, anti-heroin chic, Gargoyle, Silver Birch, The Wild, Ovunquesiamo, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and Yellow Mama, among others. Her chapbooks are Languid Lusciousness with Lemon from Finishing Line Press and Feathers on Stone from Main Street Rag.