The moon, the moon

As bright as could be, nearer earth than it really is, just off our back porch to the east: a full as full can be moon. Oh, my Lord.....

I realize I've written about the moon many times before. I found a couple of them for you....

Saturday, November 22, 2014

The moon

Tonight, as I stepped out on our chilled deck to smoke a cigarette (I know! I know! Don't chide me about it! The cold does more to curb my smoking than all my friends' warnings....) I looked up, as I always do, to find the moon.

It's too overcast to see her, but I looked anyway.

Today I was sorting through all the 'paper' of my past, and found a poem I wrote a decade ago about the moon. I was sure I must have shared it in the 1100 or more posts on this blog, but when I typed 'moon' into the blog search box, I got several hundred responses (I mention the Moon a lot) but none that was this poem. So here it is, from November 26, 2004--4 days short of 10 years ago.

THE MOON

OK, so I'm out on the deck smoking a cigarette
and drinking red wine.
What I'm really doing is watching the moon
through the trees in this, my now favorite tiime
of the year...when all is bare, stark, dying and thin...
knowing what comes next is new life.

Most people I know would chide me for smoking
and more than a few would deride my for
the red wine--but I no longer care.

What I care about is the moon, the moon, the moon.

I know why countless ancient folks worshipped the moon.
Why wouldn't one worship what brings dime light
to deep darkness and moves the seas.

Like the seas, the moon moves me.
Outward into the great chill of the ionosphere and beyond...
though I will never possess the moon, she draws me near,
though I will never own her, I worship her.

When the waxing ceases and the waning begins,
the moon pushes me back, deep inside myself,
down along a dim passage I seldom have walked,
to a door to a room I don't remember knowing,
and I open the door...and there I find, the moon.

So I stand and stare, wishing to know more,
longing to possess the wondrous brightness of it all.
Waiting on my deck, smoking and drinking, watching this only:
through the bare trees--the moon, the moon, the moon....

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

The moon, the moon....

The moon, in the sky beyond the half dozen hemlocks beside our back porch, is as full as it can be in the eastern sky.

OK, I know the moon doesn't really shrink and then swell, it's all about the earth blocking the sun that reflects off the moon. I know that. But I like to think the moon does really shrink into darkness and then swell into wholeness. It seems right.

"Lunatic" comes from the Latin for 'moon'--luna. And I truly believe the moon has an effect on the way we are.

At St. John's, all the years I was there, we dreaded the full moon. Crazy people got crazier and people who didn't seem crazy got a little bit crazy.

Folks in the Soup Kitchen acted out a bit more. Street People became more aggressive. And a Vestry meeting on the night of a full moon would devolve into nonsense.

No kidding.

I actually knew today that the moon would be full tonight. I had this energy unlike my normal energy--just a little off the grid. I said things to people I probably wouldn't say at a quarter moon or half-moon and never in the dark of the moon.

I like believing the cosmos has some power in our lives. Like the moon drives us a bit. And the seasons make us different. The Spring 'me' is different than the late Autumn 'me'.

We are looked over and driven by the stars. Don't tell me astrological signs are meaningless. I am Aries on the cusp of Torus and that rules my extroversion and my irony. I really know that.

If you get a chance, go out and look at the moon tonight or tomorrow night. A full moon is a lot of energy. Really.






(back to 12/12/16)

I'm just into the moon in a way I don't understand. Maybe I'm into it because I don't understand why. That would be 'moon-like' after all....