Mary Orovan

By the light of the

Moon half full over Manhattan
and everywhere later sooner
save for the cloudy
or so dusty dusk
ah my orblet   hemi semi
demi monde

you promised ere more
that I too can again flame full    
suchly shine
if you grant me a boon
as in the time of hoop skirts
or ancient loins' loinclothing only.

I desire not goods or false godlets or goodly fortune
goblets of pearlinesses or even niceties.
I wish to stitch hurts' knit brows with love and your beams
hopes filled like the fulling moon

and on the darkest light night
stealthy lune mine
knowing the next and next bring bettering
I too wax poetic
with ambition and willglow amber hope.
Though on your barren land pocked dry beds
nonetheless we make with you our own moist joy.

Ghost

He came to me
from a sea of where
   a turtle a fish
       anemone
edge of a wave in the light.

They all gambol
   nimble
fretting at the weather
or do they

nothing to soak or scatter
        can't reflect in puddles
but is that last ring of a pebble
     I toss   you   dissolve to
breeze on a Calla lily
        or Day
a cartwheel   Tarzan in trees
     they leave.

In a dream you came
sat on the bed & I modestly
in another corner father I said
     there is much I carry
I never tell—
then my mother entered the room
     on her usual broom
and swept me all alone again.

Mary Orovan is the author of Green Rain (Poets Wear Prada 2008). Her work appears in Plainsongs, Poetry East, and The Seventh Quarry (Wales). She lives in New York City. contact