Lurcher moon

Late June
eleven o’clock
the mid-summer sun finally gone down
but the sound of its light still echoing around the encircling night

Fireworks plume and explode above Oxford’s monarchist stronghold

And suddenly the moon!
Low-slung and westward-bound
first she pickpockets my breath
then repays one lung with envy and the other with awe

How desirable and edible the first quarter of the moon!

I pursue her along Weir Lane and down to Iffley Lock
past the rushing weirs
across the sturdy lock gates
over the well-planned curvature of the Mathematical Bridge
to the southside of the Isis

Out of the shadows of nowhere a golden lurcher passes me by
head-down and without owner
nervous purpose knotted into each and every knuckle of her spine

Against the muffled whinge and whine of the ringroad traffic
the river flows as silently as mercury

Bats flit and flicker in and out of existence
like thirsty ghosts

Over Iffley meadows someone has laid perfectly a sheet of woven mist
in which to catch the falling moon
as she pulls a blue-black blanket of cloud behind her
lest human gaze wake the sleeping stars

Were I to kiss her now she would burn me to a cinder
Her lips are aflame with her lover’s regal and eternal name

But look! How she falls and falls and falls and falls
until she is
no more than the silent tip of a crescent horn
and then is gone

I turn for home
arms folded against the damp air
hands tucked inside my jacket
hungry for the midnight touch of your huntress fingers across my skin