Moon Blindness

stepping out from the artificial
hospital world of dim fluorescent light
into crisp, clear night
the moon is blazingly white
she realizes
brighter even than the streetlight

(writing brings involuntary memory
the realization she's echoing ani difranco:
i realized that night that the hall light
which seemed so bright when you turned it on
is nothing compared to the dawn which is nothing
compared to the light which seeps from me while you're sleeping)

she once wrote on a similarly
clear night
the moon's detail
was finer than a mammogram

tonight the sharp contours of grey craters
remind her of marble etched in bas-relief

staring into the dazzling light,
she thinks, 'moon blindness'
can't quite place the term
rising up from the murky recesses
of her memory

moon blindness
the poetically named horse disease
chronic recurrent uveitis
she memorized the name this fall
as most commonly caused
by the spirochete leptospira

she marvels how the language of medicine
comes unbidden, leaking out
from the sliding glass doors
behind her