Maureen E. Doallas: "Reading Goodnight Moon"

is not like stopping
at McDonald's
for your favorite double-shot latte.

You don't drive through.

You take each word
in a languishing slide off the tongue,
naming what is named
that you never saw before.

Looking, finding, pointing delighted
in the room the moon the light
the red balloon that lifts

Darkness even as sleep
falls fast
and clock's hands change

What you see changing
before a child's eyes.

If you slow long enough
to take in what your child sees
with eyes that

Refuse to be moved
to a new page before
the first page is exhausted

The last page you turn
holds the dream
you thought would never last:

A snuggling close closer still
beneath moon's shadows.


 

"Reading Goodnight Moon" by Maureen E. Doallas. Text as published in Neruda's Memoirs: Poems (T. S. Poetry Press, 2011). © Maureen E. Doallas. Reprinted by permission of the poet.

Art credit: Page from the children's book Goodnight Moon, written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd.