Showing posts with label "Don't the Moon Look Like an Asshole?". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Don't the Moon Look Like an Asshole?". Show all posts

Sunday, October 02, 2022

"Don't the Moon Look Like an Asshole?"

 



**** on the grounds of McLean Hospital -- a psychiatric hospital outside of Boston.


I was walking with a patient who was in my poetry group at McLean Hospital one evening, when he looked up at the night sky, saw a vivid moon, and asked me " Don't the moon look like an asshole?" And indeed, this disheveled man, certainly no man of letters, came up with the best metaphor he could. He gave me a radiant smile, which I returned. The moon was not his Byronic mistress, but for him it was not the 'butt of jokes' but poetry. He did not --"go a roving late at night," the moon did not ride on some luminescent wave--but for him it walked in beauty in the night.