Dan Campion

Clair de lune

I am the cliff from which I fell, the air
through which I fall, and when I reach the stream
below I’ll be the water churning there
in starlight, burning with a hectic gleam.
You’ll see the surface as if it were calm,
your kind of sight still showing you the scene
as layers of averages, a steady palm
held forth for reading what its patterns mean.
The patterns hold the meanings you supply.
From partial knowledge you don’t hesitate
to build a city, hum a lullaby,
look right through me, who feels the river’s weight.
Now, looking through me, tell me what you see.
I know. The mirror face of clarity.

Dan Campion’s poetry books are Calypso (Syncline Press), A Playbill for Sunset and Star Anchors (both from Ice Cube Press), and The Mirror Test (MadHat Press). He is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and a coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). Dan’s poems have appeared previously in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal and in Able Muse, THINK, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and other journals. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.