Goodnight Moon

Equal parts lullaby and elegy, James Arthur’s poem is for children present and past.

—

Goodnight Moon

I used to be as unsentimental as anyone could be.
Now I’m almost absurd, a clown, carrying you on my shoulders
around and around Palmer Square, through the cold night wind,
as stores lock up, and begin closing down. Goodnight,

fair trade coffee. Goodnight, Prada shoes. Goodnight soon,
my little son. You’re a toothy, two-foot-something sumo—a giddy,
violent elf—jabbing your finger at the moon, which you’ve
begun noticing in the last week or two. Moom, moom—for you,

the word ends with a mumming, as it begins. For me, beginnings
and endings are getting hard to tell apart. There was
another child your mom and I conceived, who’d now be reading
and teaching you to read—who we threw away when he or she

was smaller than a watermelon seed. The chairs, the domestic bears,
the clocks, the socks, the house—once again a strange cow
springs from the green ground, beginning the enormous leap
that will carry her above the moon.

***

First published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day Project.

Interested in submitting poetry to The Good Men Project? Check out our guidelines.

Photo by Fermín R.F. /Flickr

The post Goodnight Moon appeared first on The Good Men Project.