SEUNGA MOON
While the Clouds Pass
I lay, quiet in bed,
my organs filled with thoughtlessness
borne by the strain of my waking hours.
My shoulders ache at night and the cracks echoing
from my back are new. Exhaustion plagues me, and I
am quickly asleep, dreamless.
I am divided
up neatly into years, months,
weeks and days, with places to be, people to see.
Somewhere between them, I have misplaced all the words that
I've collected to name me poet. I cannot spend my thoughts
and tongue on that which harbours my voice. Instead, I have
subjected my flesh to the rapid cycles of routines, for
numbers in time only grow larger while feeding off mine.
Perhaps my work helps me,
spending hours with children, invited
into small conversations, seeing ideas and
imagination played out using words and language beyond
voice, all yet unclouded by the disease of time. They breathe in vivid dreams
and passing thoughts and I write them on pieces of paper. A small stack of
them lies on the corner of my table, reminding me of what I have lost long ago—
wisdom only known to eyes that see from below.
It is a failure to them that I have lost mine.
Dandelion
It is such a fragile thing— and unknown to those small and innocent hands which pluck these dandelions from the fields, that it is the life in their breath that will carve the way to these flowers’ rebirth. They will see the outline of a hundred seeds dancing against the winds, floating on, like the clouds in the sky, decorating the borders of their childhood wonders.
And one day, once the cycles have turned and new clouds have formed over the sky, those hands will have grown, and so too, generations of dandelions in the fields. In time, new petals will have bloomed, resilient and anchored.
So those seeds will fly again, over skies and across distant lands, blown into the winds from a breath grown older.
What Happens in Heaven Dies on Earth
You are shaped in clouds— the pillowed particles in day, smeared stratus gold adorning my skies, or the ancient blooms of dust in that rarely disturbed corner of my bookshelf.
For years, I revered you and for longer still you have haunted me, your name stuck stubborn on countless tongues, who tell me that you are the wonders of stars, songs, and skies. You, somewhere alongside angels and souls above, wait for me to call for you again.
Sometimes, my mother mentions you, and asks if I still speak to you. I smile politely, and say that I’ve been too busy. She sighs, ‘one day the heavens will make it so’.
But only you and I would know, that for years I have been writing your name lowercase. I have avoided all the faces who have known us, and I do not look towards the sky— for you are only a tangible mirage and all that you have touched, I have killed within me.
Silver Lining
Clouds in Day oil on canvas
I am the rolling and ancient spirals of softened decay. my core is hollow, torn by the winds and sinking too shallow— I am a mammoth, captured in cycles. make meaning where my body unravels, there within, draw your dreams of tomorrow. I am drowned to your depth, coiled in shadow, my shattered remains are heavenly vessels. I am curled at the cusp of my limits, what reigns over minds consumed by despair? my scars will thunder bright over the seas, while my futile dreams fade into caskets. I have tried, but hopes dissolve into air, so find yours within my cursed disease.
Estuary at Day's End, by Simon de Vlieger
Noctilucent etching; blue-grey ink on paper
spirals of day will fade from view and as hollow air fogs wary thoughts, the tides draw shallow. the incessant toils of mundane cycles reveal relics under earth and unravels time as ancient capsules of tomorrow and past. the world has seen your shadow. look deep under layers of dirt— vessels, slow moving, find new life without limits. scars heal over disasters and despair. build your home upon it, like the seas, storming over sunken ships as their caskets feed the hungry under water. air, anew, welcomes you far beyond your dis-ease in the foreign lands of your memories.
Going Westward, by Stephen Alonzo Schoff
Seunga Moon is a poet whose work explores themes of identity, childhood and ambivalence, drawing on personal experiences and shaped by her studies in psychology, creative writing and early childhood education. Perhaps, true to her name, she has a fondness for weaving celestial imagery into her writing. Beyond her work, she is often drawn to concept albums and can be found returning to the same one for months at a time.
