Maturing Moon

sits on a plane next to the window and a big man
from Texas with an eye patch and a cat under his seat, sits

with empty pockets and full mind, of memories,
of plans, of dreams and hopes, sits

and thinks of this woman, this woman with blue eyes,
this woman it wants to be around, to revolve around
(how many earths were there before this one, this beautiful
one), this woman hiker in the midst of Oregon, thinks

of aging and time and carnal instinct and always thinks
differently in the moment than in the plan, sits

and reads about the prairie land, the hard winters
and the hot summers, the immigrants who fed their brides
to the wolves to survive and then had to come to America, sits

and becomes annoyed with this large fellow
always snapping pictures of Rainier, the desert,
the Rio Grande, everything below, sits

and watches the polka dotted crops on the ground,
the wide rivers red and dry, and as it sits

the moon closes its eye and feels the pull
of distance, that missing feeling, that sensation
when someone you are close to for so long
is suddenly taken away, feels

that lack and that sadness yet another time in life,
but feels something else also, something
new, something underneath, a root entangled
or a bridge laid, a fundamental sense of security, feels this

and realizes that emotion is but ephemeral, that love
is not burning, nor is it in orbit but that it is a mutual
transcendence of time and space, a connection through
the core of the Earth between Portland and Madrid
and matures.