Moon Dance

“I don’t want to lead you on,”
said the Earth to the Moon

She laughed, not unkindly
Knowing he always said this
After a deep lunar tide
When her gentle gravity
Had laid him more deeply bare
and flooded him all at once
And she had come close enough
- Her light with the weight of honey and breathlessness -
To revel over him in her audacious fullness.

Then she was thrust away on a long, solitary
Slingshot path
Banished farther away from all his topography, from his depths.

Who was leading who and why did it matter?
The steps in this dance were always the same.