COLD MOON
Cold Moon, December- moon,
Sits in a blackened sky,
Passive, brittle,
A skinflint’s lantern–
Barely shedding light over
A frozen landscape,
Chiding, disdainful
Like an old man
With a smeared monocle.
This month’s moonlight
Would not sustain a mole!
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2009
Tags: "Cold Moon", poetry, Winter
Lady Nyo's Weblog 
January 7, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Brrr…
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January 7, 2010 at 4:38 pm
LOL!
I have been thinking of the effect of shortening words in a poem.
Or less of them.
Going after the visceral.
Thank you, Berowne for reading.
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January 7, 2010 at 4:40 pm
I think you managed just fine! I have to go put on a sweater now…
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January 7, 2010 at 4:50 pm
LOL! Oh, cute, Margie!
For the past two years, I have been influenced greatly by Japanese poetry forms. I have written of my discoveries on the blog, but this January I have given myself a gift: For the next few months, I will read and read deeply, those beautiful tanka and other forms that have been around since before the 8th century in Japan. They usually take the form of one sentiment, and a lot of that longing and loss. But they are amongst the finest examples of erotic poetry I have come across. I am thinking of two women poets, centuries between them, that set a standard in love poems: Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu.
I think the Lady Nyo’s Poems …(that Lady Nyo….not this Lady Nyo) were influenced by her reading of this poetry, but she comes from the `16th century.
Perhaps it’s heating with a wood stove, elegant though it looks, that is inspiring these ‘cold’ poems!
Thank you, Margie for reading….and best of all! Responding!
Lady Nyo
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January 7, 2010 at 6:24 pm
> the effect of shortening words in a poem
The very un-Japanese Milton does that in “Paradise Lost” where he describes a dismal, perhaps hellish scene as “Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, and shades of death”. Your lunar landscape is quite cozy in comparison…
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January 7, 2010 at 7:26 pm
I’ll take ‘cozy’ over Hell any day.
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January 7, 2010 at 8:25 pm
You’d think everybody would; and yet according to Dante et al. the other place is quite heavily populated. Maybe they know something?
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January 7, 2010 at 10:02 pm
I would rather sit on a bench in Hell than a bench in Heaven …..so many of my most interesting friends are in Hell I am sure.
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