Moon at Half Past Noon

The plush car snored, a sealed, soft world,
A capsule through the sunlit day.
Two children in the backseat, curled,
As fields and sky in silence lay.
His wife, she smiled, a gentle sight,
The world a blur of gold and green.
A perfect, moving, quiet scene,
Bathed in forgiving, kindly light.

Then on the glass, a sudden bloom,
A tremor of a dusty wing,
Dispelling all the settled gloom,
A fragile, unexpected thing.
Its wings were not mere orange hue,
But like a sunset steeped in time,
Each one a parchment, traced in lines
Of jet—a script of black and white.
And on the edge, a string of pearls,
Small moons that held the captured day,
A promise they could not convey
In any language of the world.

The air grew still. The car’s low drone
Became a chant from long ago.
The memory rose, a sterile white,
The scent of dread, of waiting, cold.
His mother’s arms, a cage of love,
“Be brave, my son, be strong and bold.”
They would not let him cross the door,
He was too young, they said, too small.
He only saw the hospital wall,
And heard the words left unsaid.

That was the moment. The endless one.
The threshold he was not to cross.
The final breath, the setting sun,
That framed his everlasting loss.
And so his mind, in tender theft,
Built scenes of what was never said,
A thousand goodbyes in his head,
Of all the loving gifts bereft.
He’d lived it vicariously, in dreams:
His small hand nestled in the large,
A shared, impossible, last charge
There on that final, fragile marge.
That moment, stolen by the grave,
Became his ghost, his constant chore—
A never-opened, endless door
In the dark mansion of his brave.

But now, this creature, poised and calm,
Began a slow, deliberate dance.
A breath, a pulse, a gentle might,
That held the father in a trance.
It fanned its wings, a slow, full sweep,
A prayer book opening in the air,
Revealing secrets waiting there,
A vigil it had come to keep.
It paused, and in that held repose,
Its wings, a perfect, balanced frame,
It seemed to whisper his father’s name,
And was the hand he never held,
The final peace he couldn’t make,
The truth too beautiful to tell,
For its own sacred, quiet sake.

He spoke, not to the glass, but through,
“Your grandfather,” he softly said.
The children, feeling something new,
Looked up from where they’d bent their head.
His wife reached out, her hand met his,
A squeeze that said, “I feel it, too.”
The past was making all things new,
And healing with a silent kiss.

The butterfly, with one last glance,
A tilt of wings that said, “I’m free,”
Vanished into the sunlit air,
Leaving its truth for all to see.

The road stretched out, the journey long,
The children softly sang a song.
He felt the righting of a wrong
He’d carried for a lifetime long.
The endless moment, found at last,
Not in the past, but held fast.