The moon’s silence was an invitation to invent its powers,
so when in love we spoke about its influence,
how, even when it was on the other side
of the world, we felt it urging us toward each other.
We’d known for years it could move oceans, cause catastrophes,
but these days it seemed more powerful than ever—
levees broken, towns under water, heartrending diminutions.
It happened with and without us, was never our fault.
Once we might have blamed a vengeful god,
long since forsaken. Now we looked to meteorologists
for explanations, and with visible excitement
they gave us what we needed, those daily portals into havoc,
which allowed us to be elsewhere, on a couch, say,
in a distant living room with an alibi, as if someone else
were responsible. Nighttime or daytime, the moon rewired
our universe. Words came to us, and we turned
them into song. We even learned to believe them.