Sketches

by William Rieppe Moore

The mini cookie cutter cheesecloth moon
over the yellow Iron Mountains of fall
is as impermanent as rattled leaves underneath it.
Not until I’d wheeled along in my mid-size truck
well-past Dollar General on 91—a bumpin
free-trade merchant for the prophesy to come,
did I even see the moon crack its geode in the day.
When I say, mini, I mean thumbnail small—
when you hold your arm just like that
with your thumb up as if you were tryin
to hitch a ride with the sky and the fist is not quite
closed, like a trade paperback from an outdoor library,
and the hand is positioned as if it could think.

But I didn’t say that the mountains, they weren’t
yellow like what you’d see on a primary color wheel.
To be honest the woods were pigmented by what
you get when lots of colors link like a chain from
far away—shades of coral reef folks say
don’t occur in nature or deviate from
natural tones—I say I saw coral that color once
on a cruise ship to Guadeloupe, but back to
mountains and the moon that let you see so closely
you might let slip, Boy those mountains
and that little thumbnail moon. Here I’ll sketch
the moon like this and let itbe confused
for a rambler thumbin to get on down the road
hummin to that fair land to which I go.

William Rieppe Moore is from Richland County, South Carolina and moved to Unicoi County, Tennessee with his wife. He started teaching high school English after earning an MA in English from East Tennessee State University. Moore’s poetry has received Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations and appears in Driftwood, Still: The Journal, Blue Earth Review, Appalachian Places, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. His work is forthcoming in James Dickey Review.