POEM: A Carolina Moon

A Carolina Moon
 
 
A
full moon
 
shines
brightly
 
in
the black
 
night
sky
 
outside
my

bedroom
window.
 
It
hangs high
 
over
a trove
 
of
trees
 
nearby
in this
 
apartment
complex.
 
No,
this is
 
not
a story
 
of
any
 
seedy
underbelly
 
of
life
 
in
the
 
working-
class,
 
in
the
 
New
South,
 
detailing
rogue
 
figures
and
 
outlaws
and
 
drugs
and
 
prostitution
and
 
all
that.
 
No,
this is

just
a
 
story
of
 
the
Carolina moon—
 
how
bright,
 
how
beautiful
 
above
the
 
darkened
trees.
 
It
is
 
hard
to
 
imagine
someone
 
escaping
this place—
 
a
slave

 

running
in the
 
underground
railroad
 
in
the
 
antebellum
South,
 
headed
North,
 
or
a
 
mass
migration

in
the
 
early
twentieth-
 
century,
away
 
from
old
 
Jim
Crow.
 
It
is
 
hard
to imagine,
 
even
if
 
entirely
understandable.
 
Why?
Simply
 
because
no
 
moon
shines
 
so
bright,
 
so
beautiful
 
in
the dark

night
sky
 
as
this
 
Carolina
moon
 
tonight.


—Nicholas Patti