Is This a Definition of Mercy?

 

"Is this a definition 

of mercy?" she asked.

"Yes." he said.  "This

is a definition of mercy."

  

 

…Their ships have drifted away

They are stars, and snowflakes floating down

Into your hands, love.

                                           James Wright

                                           A Way to Make a Living

 

It’s too cloudy to make a view

of the moon worth searching for.

In a few hours, a flower is supposed

to pass over the shadow

or through the shadow, brief

where we plant our feet, briefly.  Maybe

 

by the time the eclipse is going

to start, the wind

will have blown enough of the puff

and rumple off and at least

one of us will see how the moon seems

to lean into darkness like a cheek easing

 

into a hand that’s on its way

down into it all once more, once, once more.

A hand that’s been around the world

and back

a hand that’s on its way

out into it all once more

but for this moment and for the full

 

duration of this moment will stay:

it will soothe and be soothed, cupped

into clouddark and then, pulling the shadow

with it, move slow,

deliberate as a magician, off stage

and away.