The moment wolf-moon grips the burnished throat of sun,
the cats cower, the birds frenzy their call.
They sense its lunar teeth
before its light in the kitchen
begins to silver breakfast cups and plates,
before its ice-cold enters our house.
We move in whispers through the rooms, afraid
to look up, even through the pinhole of colander,
for fear wolf-moon will take the eye out of us.
We pull courage to our shaking hands,
stand in the night-lit field, hammer the saucepan lids
as the beast moves in for the kill.
The din fills every inch around us, as does the dark,
but we keep on beating and beating
until wolf-moon is on the run.
Then one more strike, one final clang and we watch him
drop the sun from its jaws, slink away,
our world turned, back to day again.
Geraldine Mills's publications include An Urgency of Stars (Arlen House), which was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship, and The Other Side of Longing, a poetry collaboration with the American poet Lisa C Taylor (Arlen House, 2011). Her children's novel, Gold, was published by Little Island in 2016
