Moon Prayer

Tonight the moon lies on its back:
a thin, white spine. I count each vertebra
of the woman next to me in bed,
map her lumbar curvature:

each bone : a moon : a linear diagram
down her back. In this parable
in which I am an astronomer
the night sky is a body capable of holding
what may not survive our atmosphere.

Oh god of well-made darkness,
let us not forget how prayers have been cruel,
how the moon has been misconstrued
for a knife glinting in the dark.