Garden of Verse: Songs Without Music, plus Notes on Where to Hear the Inspiration

 My three poems in March's issue of Verse-Virtual are gathered under the theme "Songs Without the Music." They come from my practice of scribbling possible lyrics while listening to favorite songs (then massaging them later). 
         I've also supplied links to YouTube performances of these songs, in case you'd like to try listening to the music while you read the poems. Or just listen to the (wordless) songs. Or just read the poems. 
         You can find the poems at http://www.verse-virtual.com/robert-knox-2019-march.html

         Here's one of them.



Asleep Beneath the Moon*
           

How sweet is that?
Where else would you wish to sleep?
In the sun? You get burned.
Beneath the stars? Sure --
     though lacking something, wouldn't you say, of the personal touch
given those astronomical distances?
But that big round face glowing with a mysterious and
perhaps even slightly creepy interest
in your petty human affairs here below? --
That could be nobody but the moon.
The moon has music.
It keeps coming, pouring,
flowing from the endless chain of mysterious
receding and persistent rebirths
(like a plant with thirteen annual springs)
defined by the astrophysical commands and
functional attentions --
explained in poems written many moons ago by Isaac Newton --
its darker moods always kept private
from our perverse, even morbid curiosity.
            But look! Its enigmatic smile!
its off-center shadowy eye,
its intense ability to feature in pretty much
every mood and emotion
we call on it to express.
            What is not lunar?
Its effect pure lunacy --
of attraction to distraction
(or the other way around)
but in its sweetest moments,
also, perhaps, the most summery,
another of its mysteries,
like first love --
            It's the siren of sleep,
this marvel of a companionable moon --
we sing of in songs of love and loss
and, who knows,
perhaps even, in dreams, murmur its secret name
 
Where else would I choose to
            burrow into unconsciousness, but
softly, safely, sensually,
(and quite often connubially)
beneath the moon?
 
*After the song by John Fluker; music at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK0lbDFAtfQ 

        You can find my poems and all the fine poems in the March issue at  
http://www.verse-virtual.com/poems-and-articles.html