One moon: A reflection
A critique of "common understanding"
Spoken rendition of “One moon”.
Process
“Belabored” is the label I give my October writing. Multiple poems arrived but with much effort, lacked the polish I wished for, and did not feel complete. So on the last day of the month, I decided to start a new poem using a different voice, something more care-free and slightly cheekier. It is a voice that I have written in before but remains relatively unexplored. So I dove in to see what would happen.
The permission to shift voices worked to establish an easeful flow. It was not a “sit down and a poem emerges in 10 minutes with bluebirds circling in the sky” type flow, but I could feel what was emerging in the moment with a deep trust, write it down with intention, and move forward without a plan of exactly where the poem was going next.
Writing day 1, the first three brief stanzas were written.
Writing day 2, the stanza about the new moon emerged.
Writing day 3, waxing and waning made their appearance.
Writing day 4, it was on to the daytime moon.
Writing day 5, the full moon hit the page.
I was left with a mess that I loved. There were individual lines that I knew were right, the themes were compelling, and while I could not make sense of it all in my mind, I liked something about the progression. It was a felt knowing.
Editing centered around the line breaks in each stanza. Most of my writing uses a rhythmic and lyrical flow that I best accomplish when most lines have a minimum of three to four words. It is rare for me to write a poem with one-word lines, especially multiple one-word lines consecutively but for this particular poem, I felt the move to very short lines paired with portions of stanzas with longer sentences created an interesting tension. I still cannot put into words why this poem is more interesting with this approach. The long lines aren’t more important to the poem compared to the short sentences, and I would not classify the longer lines as lyrical, but something about this dichotomy created a cadence that worked, at least for One moon.
Theme - Common Understanding
One moon is a poem that explores macro questions through micro moments.
The poem was spurred by a beautiful post-sunrise moon hanging just above the tops of autumn trees transitioning color, framed by an early morning blue sky. After pausing to stare for a minute and snapping some pictures with my phone that did not do the scene justice, I thought about how we often look past the moon because seeing it is such a common occurrence, and even when we see it we do not typically observe the nuance of that specific occurrence.
This experience evolved into a critique of what I am calling “common understanding”, defined as societal norms and pervasive cultural wisdom.
I find as I age, I become more and more entrenched in common understanding. I supposed that is to be expected but I believe it is something adults should work against. There certainly is an efficiency in leaning into common understanding. It helps us make sense of how the world works, what norms are in a career, and how to parent each of our children, but I find if I lean too far into this I miss the nuance of a situation, such as a relationship that needs more support, the child whose interests have changed, or the opportunity at my fingertips.
The flaws in common understanding can be seen when an individual brings a heightened level of attention and experiential honesty to a situation. The poem centers on this through a series of conversations, each exploring a different question that challenges common understanding, using a tone that portrays the speaker is hoping his conversational partner will be willing to see it as well. Who knows what the partner thinks. As a poet, I find myself looking at situations or objects very closely, but often feel as if there is a level of honesty about life that some want to look past or at least not discuss. I suppose honesty is avoided from fear of what it could lead to. I find honesty usually leads to more wholeness. Maybe there is acute pain in an initial confession of honesty. After all, if you’re looking at the moon in the sky during the day, you might walk into a tree, but to avoid truth leads to certain chronic pain. The places where society has avoided clear seeing, even if it is called conventional wisdom, has inevitably led to chronic societal pain.
Theme – Development of awareness
The next theme was one that was not obvious to me when I was writing, but was pointed out to me through comments from
and after I published the poem. This is the theme of awareness developing throughout a young life as told by an adult looking back on their childhood.The poem starts with a simple sentence, One moon, that contains an observation and a label of what is observed. Through the simplicity it is as if “moon” was the child’s first word. We then follow a progression, beginning with a new moon where we experience a child’s raw emotions of excitement and curiosity. The poet then arrives in a phase of learning more detail about natural events through the conventional definitions of waxing and waning. In this case the child experiences conventional wisdom as arbitrary, words assigned to experiences where the root of the word is not understood by the new learner, so there is difficulty in remembering the conventional definitions because one is trying to operate from rote memory, not deeper understanding. In these first stanzas, we see the poet returning to the point that matters, their actual lived experience of the moon…deep gray on an ink black matte, old and lost, different to me.
Next, we notice something obvious that is being avoided, expressed through the story of the moon being visible in daylight hours. You can feel the frustration with the conventional, grown-up wisdom and confusion around why the common understanding does not acknowledge more truth through statements such as what am I to do with that, and why won’t anyone talk about it?
Finally, we see deep exploration of one’s past through the story surrounding the full moon. There is a realization that what people say and what they mean are often not aligned, and how when that is tied to how a child, or really anyone, experiences the world it can be very limiting. Just reflect their light. The full moon seems like it’s trying really hard.
Leave it to a child to express what matters.
Son of a / star / I think / that’s / me. These eight words close the poem in what is meant to be a clever way where the reader can have multiple experiences. Just like the theme in the poem, your experience is what matters. Did you read in frustration, “Son of a…I’m the one trying so hard”, or did you experience self-compassion in the stanza through the picture that we are all of the stars, and our place is part of the story of cosmic expansion? Or somewhere in between?
If you enjoyed the voice of this poem, I have one prior attempt that I published over the summer titled Soulmate.
May you experience the nuance of today.
Brian
If you missed the “A Poem” post of One moon, you can find it here. I hope you will read and enjoy!
One moon
I swear I saw the moon during the day.
No one ever talks about it though,
but it’s there hanging over my head
at 11 in the morning.
What am I to do with that?
Why won’t anyone talk about it?
It’s kind of pretty in its forbidden state.
Your process notes are as compelling as the completed poem.
I love these comments and thoughts on process, Brian. Fascinating.
Amazing photos, too.
"I was left with a mess that I loved. There were individual lines that I knew were right, the themes were compelling, and while I could not make sense of it all in my mind, I liked something about the progression. It was a felt knowing." This is so good. Even more so that some of the theme was there but you weren't fully aware until reading the comments after posting the poem.