Moon Shell
Grandmother-breast, blue-veined dun, moon shell.
Fiddle-head, cyclone, galacticized skeleton, moon shell.
Sand washed underfoot spills out, spills in.
Rock-hard water, calculus of carbon, moon shell.
Light-rays divide and spin through channels of bone.
Shadowy eye of whale, of Edisto Indian, moon shell.
Caress of crab-claw and whelk, of mountain stone.
Futility lunges at muscular ocean, moon shell.
Are dolphins’ whistles etched in the growth-rings?
No—oceans mirrored in the ears of children, moon shell.
The Druid shifts it hand-to-hand: eternal spiral/failed circle?
Christening-gown, fortress, bungalow, coffin, moon shell.
© 2010 Katherine Williams
The ghazal is an ancient Arabic form of love song, made of couplets unrelated as to subject, but unified by a rhyme and refrain, with the author’s name or nickname placed in the last stanza. The Bee Street Light Conversation Society was a private beer-drinking group ca. 1982 that included a philosopher, a midwife, an athlete, and a Baudelaire fan they nicknamed Druid.
The author gratefully acknowledges publication of “Moon Shell” in Ripple Effect Carol Bass, Ed., Maine Authors Publishing (2017)
