“The moon is merciless,” she writes.
Cruel and scathing, she tells us.

Is this the same moon under which
lovers swoon?

The same moon toward which
canids tilt sharp-muzzled heads and
sing ballads torn from the depths of
ancient heritage?

Seer of harvests, bountiful and ripe.
Sometimes new,
sometimes blue,
sometimes erased by crumbling clouds,
sometimes agleam like a new gold tooth.

How can it be merciless, suspended
beyond mortal hands? Out of reach,
out of touch,
timelessly same as the day it was born.

“I know the bottom,” she writes.
“I do not fear it; I have been there.”
Moon-stricken poet, no longer a pawn
to the beacon of night,
where is this bottom you speak of, and
where are you now?

NaPoWriMo Challenge, Day 29: pick a poem written by Sylvia Plath, and then write a poem that responds or engages with your chosen Plath poem in some way.

I chose the poem “Elm,” written on April 19, 1962.