By Mike Smolarek

The moon fell tonight.

I saw it when I was outside in the cold,

walking my pup, Scrappy, who loved to play under the moonlit sky.

and I asked myself why it was so cold tonight?

It slowly fell towards the earth

getting brighter, but not bigger as it

bottomed out in front of me, half-buried

near some berry bushes in the wet earth.

I was once told if there was a full moon

and you looked closely, there was a man

looking down at you, smiling.

But there was no man smiling at me from this moon.

Then the moon leaped back into the sky

as if pricked by the thorns of the bush,

the berry bush in the park.

The light chased the dark from the sky.

The moon settled comfortably in the sky again,

just where it had been before it took a trip

and landed in the berry bush and jumped back up.

And now my pup and I were all alone again

And I asked myself why is it so cold tonight?