Whispers of the Waning Moon

Beneath the ash-gray cloak of twilight’s sigh,

a silver scar once split the velvet sky—

the moon, now frail, her fractured face half-drowned,

sings dirges to the stars that don’t look down.

She croons of epochs when her glow was bold,

when tides obeyed her pulse, and myths were told

of lovers bathed in mercury, unafraid

to trust her phases, though their promise frayed.

But now her craters brim with phantom tears,

her light devoured by the glare of years.

No sailor steers by her erratic grace;

we’ve wired the dark with neon in its place.

Her lullabies, once threaded through the breeze,

now drown beneath the static of TVs.

We scroll past constellations, swipe her glow,

forgetting how her tides once taught us flow.

The owls still ask her where the night begins,

but we’ve replaced her riddles with algorithms.

Her scars, her silences, her borrowed shine—

we’ve paved her mysteries into a parking sign.

Yet sometimes, when the smog forgets to cling,

she bleeds her pallid grief on everything:

a sidewalk puddle mirrors her despair,

a child points up, but no one stops to stare.

She dreams of deserts where her voice was law,

of wolves who howled her hymns with reverent awe.

Now, even shadows mock her muted reign—

a ghost dismissed as "light pollution’s stain."

But wait—beneath the bridges, in the cracks,

her whispers pool where rebels trace her tracks.

A poet, ink-stained, squints to read her scars,

and writes this elegy for the moon, and ours.