October 2016
Ruth Moose
rumoo@email.unc.edu
I taught creative writing at UNC-Carolina, was on the faculty for 15 years.  Have published 6 collections of poetry most recently Tea and The Librarian.  Available from Main Street Rag Press. My first novel, Doing it at the Dixie Dew won the Malice Domestic Prize from St. Martin's Press and was published last year.  It has done well and the sequel, Wedding Bell Blues is due out 2016.  Am working on the third one, Daylily Do Off at the Dixie Dew.

​Antediluvian


“To be an antediluvian.is an extremely proud and pleasant thing,”
            Charles Dickens
 
 
More than a thousand years ago 
      when I was young and silly, I believed
 in sugar Valentines and ribbon flowers
             pinned in places of the heart.
 
A thousand years ago when
           I was wild and crazy-eyed I wanted
                          a world
           of thin white curtains blowing
          in warm breezes from wide sandy beaches.
 
A thousand or so years ago I loaded my arms
         and cracked my back with pages
in every word of the world’s ways until I knew
          everything
                         and nothing.  
                        Nothing at all.
 
                  Still I was happy.
 
A thousand million billion years ago I wore hats
       of every shape and color
       purses that matched my skirts and jackets
                 and
 I marched with the  merry go round crowds
               at the fair.
 
 
O, several million years ago I loaded my days
              with  paper and coins
           traded towns and  lives for those in chairs
                    below. 
 
 
A thousand shoes ago I ran with life, tripping and falling, rising only
        to run footpaths in flats and heels, leather and plastic, city streets.
 
             I  had long legs, tough heels,
                                                 sweet toes
                              and loved the race.
 
           Loved the air.
                              Loved.  Loved.  Loved.
          
                  I was fleet of feet.
 
 
Now
       I am barefoot in this afterlife,
                         
                            limping and leaping. over tender stones
                                          upturned and mossy.
©2016 Ruth Moose
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