February 2023
Bio Note: I'm a writer and performer who loves bringing stories to life on page and stage. I love to celebrate small moments and investigate ideas with poems. I enjoyed the chance to think about opposing elements in poems--the first, feathers and stones, the hard and soft and the second the concept of full and empty as they relate to the full moon.
Feathers to Stone
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.
Originally published in Feathers on Stone, Main Street Rag
Emptying and Refilling the Moon
Yesterday evening full moon
spilled its glow across our pond.
Last week only a sliver
showed and that, at the bottom
instead of on moon’s side,
revealing the secret of
the wax and wane to be
a filling and an emptying of light.
Sky dragons
sip greedily from full moon’s
globe, bit by bit reducing her
until only a sliver and then
darkness when they scatter
as she rests in
new moon phase.
sun refills moon’s energy
slowly,
slowly,
until at last she’s ready
to call out to the dragons
and the cycle
begins again.
©2023 Joan Leotta
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