Full moon rising over the wasteland,
Dry hills harbor dry souls.
Shriveling as bitter grapes,
Tangled vines planted and numbered.
Faces glimpsed but not seen.
In spaces measured by yards,
Untrodden lawns veil chasms.
Grass and rock great waters,
Lapping at shallow coral coasts.
A thousand private islands.
Hidden hearts beating alone,
Full moon setting on shared dreams.
I find this to be a curious piece. I’ve read it many times now, but I still feel like I am just scratching at the surface of meaning. Your imagery throughout is so incredibly bleak and desolate, as you describe the landscape as a “dry…tangled…bitter…wasteland”. Your focus then shifts to more of a water based isolation, but still carrying the same sense of loneliness and desolation. But then the last line carries a more uplifting end to the poem, with “a full moon setting on shared dreams.” I wonder if you see this as uplifting, or an even more tragic aspect of the separation. Can the shared dream act as a potential unifier, or does the fact that people all desire the same things out of life but remain broken apart from each other make things that much worse? Or am I completely reading this in a different direction than you intended? It’s hard to say.. But either way, thanks for the thought provoking poem, it’s fun to try to work through it.
Again, your feedback is almost more penetrating than the original piece! I’m so thankful for your true consideration of these. To let the cat out of the bag… I wrote this one while sitting on the doorstep of a friend who had just bought a gigantic house in a new development that was once a beautiful expanse of rolling hills on the plains of the front range… Now a massive subdivision whose entrance is adorned with giant iron buffalo sculptures. Many of the puns (“spaces measured in yards”) are direct descriptors of a space occupied by thousands of disconnected families whose prodigious landscapes cut them off from neighbors who live only feet away. Anyhow… Now that significant time has passed since this poem’s original posting, I felt like sharing this extra info to see if it changes your original interpretation;)
Cheers