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Meditation on the Moon

O! think about that strange celestial clump,
That ball of dust God found beneath His bed
And set it spinning round the Earth instead
Of tossing it in outer space’s dump.
Its orbit’s but an apathetic slump
Of quarters, halves, and shadows dark as lead
And seems at times so lowly overhead
A cow might well indeed it overjump.
And yet it gives us tides and months and light
So soft that tender hearts run quite amok
Enchanted by its luminescent rays.
Consider then, my soul, consider right:
If God can draw such feeling with a rock
Imagine what He’s done with human clay.

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Doubting Thomas

He by his absence tilled the ground for doubt,
Refusing news remarkable with wild
Demands to keep his harried wits about
Him, logic and its comforts undefiled;
Only to find that logic was beguiled
By miracle, by wonder he could clutch
And newly with his faith be reconciled,
Like one just freshly baptized, inasmuch
A baptism by absence and by touch.

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Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Agape Review, America Magazine, Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, U.S. Catholic, Grand Little Things, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He is editor of the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website.

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6 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    These are two precious poems with thought provoking concepts and inspiring images. “Meditation on the Moon” delights with the thought of the cow jumping over the moon and tender hearts running amok. “Doubting Thomas” challenges us to consider miracles more important than mere logic.

    Reply
  3. Cynthia Erlandson

    The opening quatrain of “Meditation on the Moon” paints an amazing and amusing (in a good sense!) imagination of God giving the moon its vocation. You’ve bravely — and successfully— used “dump” as a rhyming word — what fun — especially “overjump”! (Amok/rock is also delightful.) And the concluding couplet, though on second thought almost inevitable, is still a surprise. “Doubting Thomas” is marvelous with its theme of miracle trumping logic, and its metaphors of tilling the ground for doubt, and “baptism by absence and by touch.” A fascinating take on a fascinating event.

    Reply
  5. Jeffrey J Essmann

    Thank you, everyone, for your very kind appreciation of my work.

    Yes, Cynthia, I saw “dump” as a once-in-a-poetic-lifetime opportunity and jumped at it.

    Reply
  6. Margaret Coats

    That’s a wonderful line, Jeffrey, “A baptism by absence and by touch.” It may be the sight after the absence that effected the reconciliation, but touch makes it material and incarnational.

    Reply

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