Moonbeam Moths: Silky Thoughts, Dreams of Love & Mysterious Pleasures [Paperback]

 

 

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Have you ever been so utterly consumed by another person that your emotions sway back and forth, between deep affection and drenching lust? That when you find yourself in their presence there is a part of you that still reaches out, almost desperately, yet tenderly, for more? More of them? More of their being? More of their very essence?

I belong to you
I'm a song for you

Touch me and taste me
Take me and break me

Break me into a million butterflies (35)

When I read Rebecca Johnson's book, "Moonbeam Moths", I found myself deliriously engulfed in wet waves, rocking helplessly between romance and passion. For me, this book is more than simply reading good poetry, it is a powerful and intoxicating experience. "Moonbeam Moths" goes far beyond the beautiful expressions of a woman's feelings, it is an ecstatic escape with a sensual soul, to a succulent field of flowers.

Breathlessly erotic at times, gently fragile at others, Rebecca Johnson gracefully explores the complex mysteries of the feminine spirit. Eloquent and intelligent, yet genuinely impassioned, "Moonbeam Moths" tastefully excites the senses and arouses the sincere supplications of the heart.

~Brian Douthit
author of "Perfectly Said: when words become art"

Poetry has always been reserved for expressing our deepest and most powerful feelings. Somehow those same feelings don't come across accurately or expressively enough in prose.

Even then, many poets use allusions, imagery, metaphors and symbols to veil their most private selves which blunt the intensity of their messages. And few readers blame them. To share your innermost feelings in public has to take even more courage than for you to bare your flesh to a stranger.

Ms. Johnson has written poems in this slim volume that show more naked emotion than I accustomed to reading . . . in any format or from anyone. I found reading these poems to be a searing experience. After the first ten pages, I had to put the book down to reorient myself back into the room . . . and from inside of Ms. Johnson's reality. Seldom has any writing affected me so strongly.

If you are like most people, sometime during your teenage years you felt longing, anticipation, pleasure and pain from romantic love that dominated virtually every waking moment. That kind of love is what Ms. Johnson writes about and celebrates both for its wonder and its inherent drawbacks.

I have reread many of the poems in this volume to consider why the writing worked so well for me. The conclusion I came to was that Ms. Johnson provides herself so little cover for her feelings. There are occasional uses of imagery to provide her a little emotional modesty, but the directness of her message is undiluted by the euphemisms. Yet the work can rarely be called erotic and certainly is in no way prurient.

Ms. Johnson has a nuanced understanding of romantic love in that she can feel and describe it differently at several levels at the same time. One poem, such as Unexplained Ecstasy, can express pain and pleasure at the same time in the multiple dimensions of physical nearness, personal words, expressed understanding, physical separateness, touching, entangled lives, soulfulness and the possibility of ultimate loss. While many describe love as being one or just a few things, for Ms. Johnson love is a universe all of itself . . . and a virtually self-sufficient one. Reading this and many of the other poems gave me expanded ways to think about and appreciate love.

At the same time, she can express great intensity in a narrower palette of emotion such as in Smooth Sheets where the rejected heart and soul are transformed by imagination into enjoying ideal and perfect love.

Love is esteemed as a very high plane of existence in these poems. They speak of two souls, two minds, two bodies, two fates and two sources of passion merging into one . . . inextricably merged by the poetess's passions. A good example of this theme is Untamed Innocence where the poem speaks of being punished for seeking out the merger . . . knowing that she would do better to be the receiver of love rather than the giver . . . but also knowing that being the receiver is not her true nature.

For those who like love poetry with an erotic tinge, Freesia Pleasures' imagery will caress and embrace you the next time you smell those delightful flowers.

The overwhelming urge to love . . . even when not returned . . . is beautifully expressed in Thinking of You.

Flowers speaks movingly of how love with the right person feels so natural that is hard to imagine what life was like before meeting that person.

Ms. Johnson's best images are those involving water in its many different forms, flowers and insects. As such, Moonbeam Moths was well chosen as the title poem for the collection. She makes a remarkable connection of nature's gentle touch back to her love.

"A tiny moth kisses my arm

and laughing . . .

I think of you!"

The poems also express a confidence about love that is delightful, even when love itself doesn't work out. In Impossibility, Ms. Johnson writes:

"Promising me you would never leave

I understood you could hardly stay

Love never meant forever"

As a teenager, one of my favorite activities on dates was to read great poetry aloud to my girl friends. Had Ms. Johnson's poems been available then, I would have read hers aloud as well.

If you love love, love being in love, or would like to feel love more intensely, I highly recommend these poems to you.

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