Bitter Harvest Moon

The moon loomed large and livid
like the full orange breast
of a demoness, vivid
above the blackening crest
of a benighted knob,
feeding dreamers from her milk
the dreams of Lilith, a mob
of her children, such ilk
to haunt farmers in their beds
with their hidden desires
and their unspoken dreads,
lighting the crops unto fires.
And Lilith gazed, with her glow,
and laughed with spiteful mirth,
saying “You reap what you sow
upon this wide, fertile earth.”
Each farmer tossed and turned,
seeding their secret sin,
lusting for beauty that burned
in them to beget children
who whithered fields and crops
and polluted fishing ponds
and embittered beer hops
and dissolved family bonds.
And Lilith looked upon all
the sons of Man down below
and she reigned over that Fall,
saying, “You will know my woe
with reddening of the leaf,
the hardening of the soil,
the doubting of belief,
and the ruin of so much toil,
for I, too, was fertile land
thought too fallow for seed
and, cast aside, out of hand,
I wasted in want of need.”