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D O R O T H Y     H A R T Z        from  H i G H   W A T E R M A R K   S A L O [O] N  volume 1 number 3

June/Rose/Strawberry Moon

Rose moon rose hot and heavy, hot, heavy,
a strawberry too ripe for stem to keep,
too round and red to hold for long, too long
to keep the sweet inside all spilled on grass

We rolled on grass all sweet inside too sweet
to last inside we spilled the hot ripe seed
round and red it rose again red hot stem

rose all round, round red sweet berry split --
moon shafts seeds grow hot and heavy, heavy
I rolled away all crushed and heavy on
cool red grass ripe with seed, sweet seed to keep

Flower moon done, buck moon to come, moon turns
hot then cool turns red berries round and blue.

 

 
  H A R T Z' S  Artistic Statement from This Time We Share
The poems in this body of work reflect or comment on one of my life’s preoccupations -- cleaning up after various relatives, both ancestral and contemporary, always psychically and sometimes literally. The unfinished business and secrets of the dead, many of whom died prematurely, are my birthright, complicated by other conditions. I was born two days before the vernal equinox under a balsamic moon, ever on the threshhold to the new, the fresh, the vibrant beginning, but not yet part of it. As a child, I had low expectations of permanence. I used to sit through whole movies
without taking my coat off. It’s been a life’s work to learn to celebrate here on the threshold, but it’s always my nature to take long looks back.