Marieta Maglas

Zen Poem for The Moon

The moon rising from the water is not wet.

Yet, it resembles those ancient stones—

 

wet sentinels, their surfaces kissed by waves,

cracks etching stories into deafened silence.

 

On the horizon, it looms massive, behind invisible

beaches unyielding to erosion, quite vulnerable to

 

fissures; not just rock and dust; a dance of motion,

perpetually having the same sense, seemingly

 

autonomous, akin to the conscience; gravity and

hydrogen. The moon can change its color. Imagine

 

a stone painted with moss in a forest or painted

with corals beneath the water’s surface in the rays of

 

the same sun—it breathes! But our moon?

No gardens bloom there; no bees hover.

 

Life's pulse—oxygen’s sweet dance—is absent.

Beneath that cool face of hydrogen lies potential:

 

a fire draped in absence. Conversely, the moon we

see is a shape of light that flickers between phases—

 

from the new to the waning crescent: the play of lights

on its face; hiding and revealing the sunny embrace.

 

Who holds the keys to the secrets of the celestial bodies?

The dreamers? The lovers?  Some tales of the lonely ascetics:

 

the suffering while not knowing the truths — a cosmic God

making the Earth a place to live — a grand prison locked tight.

 

Glimmers on the retina ignite words to dance upon the tongue.

Here we breathe among stony ruins; lingering questions fade:

 

Does life vanish or merely shift to other realms in missing

oxygen? Life means energy and Antoine Lavoisier knew well,

 

‘everything is transformed.’ This dance may continue outside

our view — each breath needed for a heartbeat against time.

 

Poem for Mrs. Stone

 

Once more, she donned the guise of Juliet.

In her mind, life unfurls as an endless thread of

fabricated occurrences, a mask of mortality for

the fading, a void where one retreats to ponder.

Courage to love has always eluded her, and now,

it may be too late. Is happiness truly a prerequisite

for existence? Her husband, once a pillar in turbulent

times, begins to wane. Perhaps a lengthy escape

could rekindle the spark. No, her quest is not for

happiness but for goodness; a tapestry of harsh

lessons and long stares; the pursuit of flawlessness.

She holds the belief that striving for joy is noble,

even if she lacks the bravery to pursue it. She fears

losing her essence; raw and flawed, liberated from

the shackles of convention. Maybe what she craves

is a love untainted. He yearns to assist her, though

he often falters, and perhaps no one in his position

could have triumphed. In the twilight, she feels a sense

of well-being, adorned in elegance and shimmer,

enveloped by sweet words that dance through glasses

brimming with intoxicating elixirs, dissipating into

the atmosphere, an atmosphere drenched in feminine

fragrances and whispers of cocoa. She radiates beauty,

her inner void concealed. Her husband morphs into

a relic of a solitary psyche amidst ashes and tolling bells.

Clad in opulent attire, she embodies the persona she

has been meticulously crafted over the years. Her anguished

cry splinters between her teeth, swallowed alongside

a sleeping pill, accompanied by an abundance of water.

For her, life resembles a parched riverbed littered with

obnoxious stones. She aspires to transcend her identity

as a woman, yearning for an unattainable love that promises

radical transformation or a surrender to death's embrace.