(June 1928) 

Yencheng, Honan, China 

 

On Sunday evening as darkness crept in
the people rushed out 
with gongs
.          & pots
.                  & anything to make noise
to scare the heavenly dog
that slowly
.           very slowly
.                   ever so slowly
had placed its jaws about the moon
They persisted in their din   it was said
so the moon would not be swallowed
& leave them in the dark   forever 

 

Copyright © DS Martin. Originally published in the Windsor Review and has also appeared in So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press, 2007), Poiema (Wipf & Stock, 2008), and The Turning Aside (Cascade Books, 2016).

 

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D.S. Martin is the author of four poetry collections, including Ampersand (2018), & Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis (2013) — both from Cascade Books. He is Poet-in-Residence at McMaster Divinity College, the Series Editor for the Poiema Poetry Series, and has recently edited two anthologies — The Turning Aside (2016), and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse (2017). He and his wife live in Brampton, Ontario; they have two adult sons.

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