REGRET OF A GOLDEN KIND

by Carol Coven Grannick

 
I watched the moon this morning
unrare, the watching
but not the moon
low in the sky eye-reachable
through nearby branches
silver and stretching for full
 
but a moment away 
for a coffee cup
and it cold-burned gold
and then no more moments
away could be tolerated
 
I called for my husband
a mistake of one kind
though I wanted to share:
by the time I returned
the moon had slipped low
 
gold gone
an irrepressible emptiness
took hold—
a longing for moonshine
and gold.


* * * * *

Carol Coven Grannick is a poet, children's author, and former clinical social worker whose debut novel in verse, Reeni's Turn, won Finalist in the Katherine Paterson Manuscript Competition and Honorable Mention in the 2018 Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award. Her poetry for adults and children appears in a broad variety of print and online magazines, and she has received two Illinois Arts Council grants and a Ragdale Foundation Residency for her work. She experiences her poetry as "bendable to its purpose," reflecting wonder and joy, anger and activism as it marks the days and meanings of a life.