For Frank’s Haikai challenge #171 “cold moon”

Sundered by violence,
circling, locked in a dance, she
always shows one face
though her partner turns away,
as they drift slowly apart.

Okay, so a poem should be able to stand on its own. But as an educator (by profession and vocation), I can’t resist adding some explanation. (Stop here if you’re not interested in astronomy.)

The moon was formed from a collision of the Earth with a rogue planet about 4 billion years ago (probably). Bits of both Earth and the impacting body that were shattered off then accreted to become the moon. The Earth and moon are locked together by gravity, orbiting a common centre of mass (within the Earth, about ¾R(earth) of the way from the centre). The moon is tidally locked to the Earth – which is why the moon always faces the…