"What the Rattlesnake Said," by Vachel Lindsay

"Lunar Paraphrase," by Wallace Stevens

Moon Poems

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(image: Swiss cheese, the chief component of the moon, in spite of astronomers' and astronauts' protestations to the contrary)
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Not that you asked, but my favorite moon-poem is W.H. Auden's "This Lunar Beauty," chiefly because of the rhythm, which subtly echoes that of Jon Skelton's poetry.

Other good moon-poems include "Under the Harvest Moon," by Carl Sandburg, famous Swedish American; "Autumn Moonlight," by Matsuo Basho [how many haikus have a moon-image in the them, I wonder?] ; "Length of Moon," by Arna Bontemps; "The Moon Versus Us Ever Sleeping Together Again," by Richard Brautigan [I think we have a winner in the title-competition]; "The Moon Was But a Chin of Gold," by Emily Dickinson [I think we have a winner in the comparison-competition, and what a shock that's it's D: never mess with Ms. D.]; "Blood and the Moon," by W.B. Yeats; and "And the Moon and the Stars and the World," by Charles Bukowski.

Poem In The Air

Poem In The Air

Oh, Lord, no--not another moon-poem. Oh,
yes, poetry's tethered invisibly to the moon,
which is invisibly tethered to this terrain.
Technically, the moon's not permanent,
but compared to me, it is. I walked under it

tonight--my only option, really. The moon
wasn't quite full, so it looked pinched, and
while I stared, an impulse stole my pen
and notebook and sent another moon-poem
into bright, brief, bulbous orbit. I should

have known better than to look up and stare.
I should have had my eye on the poem in the air.