the hunger moon

they summoned you

in the waning days of the harvest,

earth still clinging damp

to the recently uprooted.

*

in your own right time,

you reign over the coldest nights

as a beacon in the barest weeks –

but here, you’re nothing

*

but a curse over the heads

of the hungry, wrenched into service

by them that warped the January thaw

into a confusion of sprouts and shoots

*

and holds the first frost hostage

a little longer every year. Welcome

to the cruelest November,

to bellies emptied while the stores sit full.

*

You were never supposed to be a weapon,

but a witness. You were never supposed

to be our enemy, but a reckoning,

the test of lean times against our generosity,

*

the annual reminder that before the bounty

comes the desperate will to try again.

*

I hope they’re paying overtime.

*

I hope you’ll flee in the face of our fiercest

generosity.