The Moon is the lone Child of Mother Earth –
There is scientific proof of its later birth –
But also note the metaphysical proof
That wherever Mother Earth goes through space –
The Moon playfully follows –
Running about Her in circles –
Playing hide-go-seek with Her shadow –
Such is typical of bonds between Child & Mother –
Need I elaborate further?
06.22.95 – 06.24.95
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Copyright by Minh Tan on listed dated of completion
and published in Perspectives, ISBN 0-9686250-0-2.
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Notes to this poem…
This was an abstract metaphorical idea I just had one night while looking up at the moon, and then relating it to what I knew of the behaviour of the moon in astronomy, something I had developed a keen interest in by 1995. It just came to me how, in English, we sometimes referred to the Earth as Mother Earth, so why couldn’t the moon be its child? There is an English term of a “moonchild”, but that means one who is born under the sign of Cancer, like me, not referring to the moon as a child like the Earth is to a Mother.
The idea just came to me in a flash, knowing the Moon goes around the Earth like a child can run around his/her Mother, never being let go far away, and stays with the Mother where the Mother goes. That was all it took for me to conceive the poem and the rest was getting it into some sort of rhyme scheme.
The last line of Need I elaborate further? served, both, to not overplay the metaphor, but also to keep the poem a one stanza poem that had become my trademark form by this time with this being the 43rd one I had written in the genre. While the name is apt for the form of one stanza, it was meant to be short like Emily Dickinson’s poem stanzas tended to be, with her work being so influential on me as my favourite poet. So in addition to the name, I defined to keep the stanzas of these one stanza poems to be “short” as in less than 10 lines. Otherwise, it would have to be classified as some other form.
The O-series of poems are one stanza poems composed before I got onto writing haiku and tanka, and short poetry while in action or traveling by select means like plane or ferry. These poems are 3-9 lines long with at least one rhyming couplet, and not of the short forms just mentioned. For the sake of elegance, I just called the collection One.
Minh Tan's Old Poetry 
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