eighteen

Why Are Your Poems So Dark?

Isn't the moon dark, too,

most of the time?

And doesn't the white page

seem unfinished

without the dark stain

of the alphabet?

When God demanded light,

He didn't banish darkness.

Instead, he invented

ebony and crows

and the small mole

on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask

Why are you sad so often?

Ask the moon.

As what it has witnessed.

by Linda Pastan