Scraps of Moon - A Poem by Denise Levertov

Moon River (Stacy Wills, 2014)

alcohol inks on yupo + sacred altering

Scraps of Moon

Scraps of moon

bobbing discarded 

on broken water

but sky-moon

complete, transcending

all violation

Here she seems to be

 talking to herself about

the shape of a life:

Only Once

All which, because it was

flame and song 

and granted us joy,

we thought we'd do, be, revisit,

turns out to have been what it was

that once, only;

every invitation did not begin

a series, a build-up:

the marvelous did not happen

in our lives, our stories

are not drab with its absence:

but don't expect to return

for more.  Whatever more

there will be will be

unique as those were unique. 

Try to acknowledge the next song

 in its body-halo of flames

 as utterly present,

as now or never.

-from The Great Unknowing:  Last Poems

by Denise Levertov (1923 - 1997)