PARIS, MEXICO
What a big white Mexican moon over Paris
this morning, round, rice-paper pale
and bright as pure coin in broad daylight.
Just such a moon hung in the sky
the day we saw the volcano for the first time
as we traveled the road from Tepoztlán to Cuernavaca,
and stopped, astonished, wondering if we were still high
from yesterday’s peyote, or dreaming, or what.
The flat, diaphanous mountain seemed to have formed
the way an image takes shape in a poet’s mind,
and the moon rode its shoulder like a cat,
burning with its own secret light.
We might still be standing there,
at the side of that road – silently staring,
not daring to move, scarcely drawing breath –
but the hungry new day swallowed El Popo
and slowly chewed up the moon.
SIEGFRIED MORTKOWITZ is older than he looks and has had his poems and stories published in Stranded, the Prague Revue, and After Hours. He is the author of a chapbook, Eating Brains, and a collection of poems titled A Matter of Life or Death, both from After Hours Press. He lives in Prague with a cat named Joe.