Quarter Moon

 

Reading Yosa Buson, 1716-1784, Japan, I return to the farm—

The whale already taken got away: the moon alone—

translated by Hiroaki Sato.  

I could see the moon as a whale swimming in the stars. The sky wide as a sea. In that place there was removal of object from its known place. I was not of them. But from another place had come there with my parents and would not stay. Those nights the kerosene lamp sat unmoving in the house. Before the electric poles poked the earth and carried wires that brought electricity to the place. Just that afternoon my grandmother chopped the head off a hen. Blood stained the stump where she worked. The plucked feathers flowered the dirt. It was a brutal act. The chickens still clucking knew they would be next. But terms shifted. There was displacement. The brutal somehow seemed holy. And the holy therefore brutal. A simple act of transfer. 

The moon was a whale under the surface of the sea. 

The whale was a moon breaching the dark field.