Full

The moon is full tonight, having swallowed all of April.
Swollen with the rays of the sun, it shines in our darkness.
Taking in the light of our eyes, it gives us back our poetry.

Lessons from Cyrano

That honor, beauty, truth are kept inside,
    food for the spirit, when mere food is scarce.
That love and joy can grant the strength to fight
    the battles of the sword or of the heart.
That courage is no less if there be none
    to witness it—and may be all the greater.
To speak the truth with your own voice—even
    if you must use another’s mouth to speak.
That there are many ways a man may ascend
    to Heaven on the wings of his invention.
That the only villains worthy of the fight
    are Falsehood, Compromise, and Cowardice.
To take what comes—the wit, the looks, the pride,
    the good and bad of fortune, the hardest tests
    of friendship and of love, accepting all
    unflinchingly—as duty and as freedom.
And if God sees fit to grant you a large nose,
    to wear it proudly, for you know He knows.

Double Dactyls from the Potterverse

HARRY
Doot-dee-doo, doot-dee-doo,
    Harry J. Potter to
    invincibility
    strangely arrived:
faced with Avada Ke-
    davra, he magically,
    asymptomatically,
    somehow survived.

HERMIONE
My-oh-me, my-oh-me,
    Granger, Hermione
    (“Hogwarts: a History—
    read it!” she’ll say)
always relied upon
    extracurricular
    bibliomania,
    saving the day.

RON
Wheezy-lad, wheezy-lad,
    Ronald B. Weasley had
    hair the most shockingly
    red ever seen.
Brave for the most part, yet
    spiders reduced him to
    pusillanimity,
    turning him green.

SNAPE
Scuzz-a-da, scuzz-a-da,
    Severus Snape was a
    disciplinarian,
    nobody’s friend.
But then in spite of this
    Machiavellian
    attitude he was re-
    deemed in the end.

DUMBLEDORE
Headmaster A. P. B.
    W. Dumbledore,
    (back for a cameo,
    though he was dead)
gave inconclusively
    eschatological
    counsel to Harry in-
    side of his head.

VOLDEMORT
Moldy-wart, moldy-wart,
    Tom Riddle (Voldemort)’s
    thanatophobia
    drove him to sin.
Sadly, his spell over-
    looked a key factor of
    consanguineity…
    Harry will win.

Shakespearean Double Dactyls

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
What-a-trick, what-a-trick,
    Beatrice and Benedick,
    swore not to marry be-
    fore they were dead.
Almost inevitably,
    irritability
    gave way to trickery...
    then they were wed.

AS YOU LIKE IT
Try-to-find, try-to-find,
    ’Lando and Rosalind,
    both of them banished and
    lost in the woods,
but as she’s two levels
    deep in cross-dressing, she’s
    unrealistically
    hidden the goods.

LOVE’S LABOURS LOST
Three foolish lords and King
    Ferdinand, Ferdinand,
    thought they could study with-
    out any girls,
then shifted drastically,
    anti-monastically,
    soon as they saw all those
    lovely French curls.

TWELFTH NIGHT
Fly-awa’, fly-awa’,
    Lucky for Viola
    (loved by the Duchess while
    dressed as a man)
brother Sebastian is
    monozygotically
    willing to fill in the
    best that he can.

Descant

after Emily Dickinson

My life sounds as a Melody,
though often poorly played —
Untuned it seems, and fickle —
Now jocular — now sad

But then a Higher octave comes,
Where sings a sweeter Note,
If I could only listen — close —
More delicate than thought —

This harmony — Exquisite —
Recalls my soul — to be
No mortal dragging on the earth
But singing — in the Sky

The Moth

flutter-
ing in the dark-
ness, trembling, only know-
ing that to find the light is worth
mere death

First and Last

Each poem is always the first and
the last ever to be written.
No matter what great deeds your hand
has done, you must needs be smitten

anew with the thought that each poem
is always the first. And the last,
even, shall be fresh, bright as foam
that sprays on rocks a fleeting blast

of joy beyond what you had planned.
Let your love for them tell you what
each poem is. Always the first and
the last thing to do—no shortcut

to that feeling of coming home,
of a complete and unsurpassed
finality, in which each poem
is always the first and the last.