The moon is sick. I fear she’ll die
      from lack of love, from poverty
      and homelessness. Lost in the sky

our daughter’s dropping down the sea
      of negligence. And who will glow
      on walkers in the night? The moon

will show and nobody will know
      because she is a black balloon
      and can’t be seen. She hasn’t gone.

Yet scholars say, ‘She went. She was
      an obscure custom of a race
      of fools.’ The moon is sick, and on

her crackled face, a pox, a buzz
      of priests are nailing her in place,
      but moon repairs herself with cosmic glue

and floats to show her throat in Italy.
      There painted by Sandro Botticelli
      she rises lily thin in her white shoe.