A waxing crescent above Lake of the Isles and the sky drifts towards darkness, crimson pink purple and orange on one side, the first stars in the blackening blue on the other. There are not enough breaths in the human day to take it all in, and even when I do, I’m still not sure what I’m looking at. It takes a still heart to feel the love between me and the sliver of the moon.
I spent all Memorial day on the inside, alternating between clean up and waste. Prepared myself for the coming week, I suppose? It’s always late in the evening, when the sun should have set but has yet an hour of life left, that time when the reddish flood races across the sky and if you blink you might miss it, roiling like a sandstorm across the sky, those moments when I feel ready to express myself finally. I haven’t said but ten words today, most of them were in anger. A full hour gone as I tried to be-still my raging heart again. But that’s all over now, the sun is getting ready to plunge below the earth’s neckline and I’m feeling this user interface before me.
I am so glad she’s gone. And then I’m not anymore. And then we speak again, and I’m glad again. This is no way to appreciate this sliver and this lunging oil painting of a sky. This is no way to give thanks to a clean tabletop, a cup of green tea on its fourth steep, and the sweat beneath my arms lubing up this process. I am wearing pajama pants and the sun is still yellow now, but we both now the pants must come off, the bright light must burn itself out. Autumn is coming.
Is the moon still a sliver now? When last I looked it was, a crescent you could sit on, drop a line off of, smoke a pipe from, dangle a green star down low from the sharp tip. Wander by the light of, slowly but surely, knowing the crescent moon would protect and reward those who stay the course, whatever it might be, with an ever larger swath of silver night light to stride by.
My beard grows long and my heart reaches out to a caravan un-stilled, wandering by the light of a moon phasing and pulsing across the night sky, facing the orange flames of the setting sun and soothing the slowly exploding, sinking orb with a glance at the bright white beneath the black skirt, with a promise to be the light of the night, as we wander eyes high to the sliver of the moon.
