Vincent Hostak - Two Moon Sutras

In his poem, “Two Moon Sutras”, poet Vincent Hostak offers a pair of sequences focused on the moon as an object of contemplation, nourishment, adoration, and sustenance. With the knowledge that sutras are Buddhist scripture, Vincent has also cast the silvered light of sacredness on his readers. “‘Two Moon Sutras’ captures concurrence: a fox outside my home eating and drinking moonlight with a more material feast; one person gazing at the moon from a quarry while a calligraphic artist renders a scene from her terrace in Japan,” Vincent informed The Dewdrop.

Two Moon Sutras

i.
What is cold and spare and sadly silver
is sumptuous to another.
That it doesn’t hold the warmth of clove and cinnamon
makes little difference to the fox.
He roots beneath my windowpane, in full moon’s light.
He wasn’t raised on figs and dates, jellies and curds,
but found the holy syrup within some bitter berry.
He’s unconcerned that the meat of a dry dead wren
makes for an angry, stubborn chew.
He may even have come for the tender cat
behind glass, once perched upon this sill.
What’s banqueted to him is especially clear
in a brighter light once each month,
so that even in the shadows,
he’ll uncover the moon’s deliciousness.

ii.
For a moment,
the clouds end all objections
and reveal a pale white skin.
The moon will dazzle you
and engulf a pastel quarry’s pores
when this is where you dwell.

While atop
a higher knot on earth’s long spine,
she observes a pebbled garden.
The jade plant faintly lit,
the sound of her voice leaving her lips
are brushed on the same cloth.

Vincent Hostak

Vincent Hostak is a writer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado. He aims to chronicle, in the sacred language of poetry, the emergent beauty discovered in everyday life and in experiences whether reassuring or unwelcome. All play a part in our mutual growth and healing. Recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest; Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas; Texas Poetry Assignment; and in the anthologies: Lone Star Poetry-Championing Texas Verse, Community, and Hunger Relief (Kallisto Gaia Press, Austin) and The Senior Class: 100 Poets on Aging (Lamar University Literary Press). He writes and produces the podcasts: the Phantom Script (A Poetry Podcast) and periodic audio features on writers in English translation for the Asymptote Journal.