Two Moons in a Purple Sky
by Sally Boyington
Illustration by Joel Bisaillon
Under a purple sky of two moons the sea parts
dragged in opposite directions
by the tug and pull and tug and pull
of twin bodies that chase each other
across the celestial bowl
turned upside down upon the sea
where fish school together
and great pods of whales sing
their song in the moonlight
while on the shores above sit great toothed beasts
whose long-ago ancestors crawled from the watery deeps
to gain the land
We walk among the toothed beasts
howling at the moons
chasing each other across a rock-strewn land
and struggling to find the end of all
the purple bowl
the place where
those two moons finally come to rest
