Ceylon Moon

Ceylon Moon is divided into five thematically unified sections — Moods and Musings, What the Night Brings, With[in] Sanity, The Voices, and All That Is Worn and Torn. Childhoosd is one of the major themes and is introduced in the first section (Moods and Musings) with poems such as I Am Becoming (that describes a brief moment when a toddler's joy erased the poet's bleak mood), and Trois Gymnopédies (based on the first theme of Eric Satie's three-part piano composition). Satie's fragile, gentle theme inspired Gedaliah to study the composer's tragic life. Having lost his mother at age 6, and his grandmother at age 12, Gedaliah creates in words what Satie expressed in melody. What the Night Brings are a series of poems delving into the nature and vagaries of our dreams. The many unsettled aspects of dreaming is extended into the next section "With Insanity" (or "Within Sanity") explores"the near thin edge" that separates our uncomfortable ideas about what actually constitutes sanity, insanity, and what lies in between. The Voices are six Rilkean poems in which Gedliah assumes the personas of non-sentiant nature (eg. clouds, mountains, trees, etc.) to explore what it is that resonates within us that draws us to them. The collection closes with All That is Worn and Torn (from the last poem in Rilke's The Sonnets to Orpheus)explores the inevitable decline and closing of our own life and what solice and wisdom we might take away at the end. The series of poems rises above the fear and despair it describes to reach for a higher position or acceptance, gratitude and love for the journey we've taken. Even for those who believe (like the author himself) that there is nothing more than what we hold no longer. The poetry of Ceylon Moon is consistent with his previous books in that they confront the darkness and chaos but do not wollow in the unavoidable despair , our "quiet desperation" but shines a light upon all that makes this life worth while in the closing poems Because My Time is Limited and What is Life?