2003 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize Finalist

On Guard, In Moonlight              by Mary Makofske

The full moon rises through a net of trees

just beginning to bud, both leaves and flowers

knotted black against varying shades of dark.

A man shifts the weight of his rifle,

knowing the ghost light makes any motion

in the woods more visible, as it makes

him more visible, on guard at the edge

of his sleeping comrades. Perhaps he does

not think any more about it, has no

memories strung to the white stone that rolls

through the sky. Perhaps it becomes the face

of a girl, bruised by his fist, or by his loss

to war. It’s a dead rock, space garbage

caught by accident in our orbit, he does not

even know the myths it trails, but the sea

leans toward its blank eye, and his eye

wanders to that hole like the entryway

of a bullet, because there is nothing

else to see in the darkness, no one to shoot.