Nocturne
Waxing gibbous, at eighty-four percent
Your blurry face, infused with liquid light
That seeps over blue velvet, the silent
Path that you glide, a soft petal of white.
Bald, deaf, your blinded half-sight,
You are sickly, unfull, gibbous and pale–
You lie weak, wrapped in warm blankets of night.
Surviving tubes and science and ships without sails.
Ancient and holy, you pull coyly back your veil,
Showering us with the glow of your fogged smile.
Slowly. You take fourteen days to inhale
Our deep water world. Our breath and blood. Our exile.
You gaze silently on us, cold and immune
To our frantic worship, wild to commune.
Stephanie Cottrell Bryant
May 13, 2003 
The poem is a Petrarchan sonnet. The photograph was taken about half an hour after sunset at University of California Santa Cruz with no editing.
© 2003, Stephanie Cottrell Bryant. Written by Stephanie Cottrell Bryant. Permission to copy, distribute, share with friends and loved ones is granted, provided the copyright and author acknowledgments remain intact.