April Moon

Intro by Kwame Dawes

Per­haps we are too close to the mon­u­men­tal moment in his­to­ry to ful­ly appre­ci­ate just how to approach it in poet­ry, but the poets are writ­ing about this pan­dem­ic in the way that poets must — to find lan­guage to chart the sen­ti­ment of the time. ​“April Moon”, by Cathy Song, fix­ates on the need for gen­uine ten­der­ness between those who are sur­viv­ing — an act of choice and con­trol, in the midst of the uncon­trol­lable swirl of loss orbit­ing about us. ​“Grace will­ing” she writes, ​“we will remem­ber.” This seems like a fit epi­taph for a poet in these times.

By Cathy Song

The moon tonight is closer to us
than it will be
for the rest of the year,
grace willing, the year
we will remember as the Great Pandemic.
Pulling us closer into its orbit,
shining the light of its fullness into the room,
we turn to hold in our hands
each other’s face as if
for the first time,
and the last—
Pink Moon, Egg Moon, Moon of New Grass.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2022 by Cathy Song, “April Moon” from The Academy of American Poets, Poem-A-Day, January 3, 2022.  Introduction copyright © 2022 by The Poetry Foundation.