Pablo Contemplates the Paradox of the Harvest Moon

Jason Ryberg

Hey you.

Yes, you.

Tell me how it is

that the moon

can be both

rose and blue,

this strangely luminescent

night-blooming fruit,

suspended so serenely, there,

in the sweaty, swampy,

nearly-liquid

midnight air,

there, just above

the darkly churning

blue-green

broccoli-stalk

horizon of trees.

And, what with

the ghostly tangerine glow

of streetlamps

and the invisible ocean

of oregano, mimosa and mint,

basil, lemon and hyacinth,

and of course

all these dangerously tart

and ripe tomatoes

lolling about

the scene …

well, the world tonight,

must truly be

a veritable

vegetable garden

of urgent

and earthy

delights.

Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-two books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and countless love letters (never sent). He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His work has appeared in As it Ought to Be, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Thimble Literary Magazine, I-70 Review, Main Street Rag, The Arkansas Review and various other journals and anthologies. His latest collection of poems is “Bullet Holes in the Mailbox (Cigarette Burns in the Sheets) (Back of the Class Press, 2024).” He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.