The Consequence of Moonlight: Poems

The act of writing poetry, for Sofia Starnes, is a “getting out of the way” so that a poem might occur, a poem that must itself become a place of resonance, where the reader might recognize a voice otherwise unheard. The Consequence of Moonlight is a poetic invitation to an awareness of an underlying Presence; it is also a call to be present as a loving witness of valuable—and vulnerable—things.

These poems are written to be depositories for the reader’s experiences. The poem’s truth is its emotion, nothing else. Why moonlight? Because the moon has no light of its own; it lives on borrowed light, as we do. The moon is best perceived and most needed in the dark, fulfilling itself in absence. It is both here and there, as is often true for saints, whose luminosity is seen as lunacy in the world.