Sailor Moon

Maybe because I'm currently reading Moby Dick, I want to call this one a sailor moon. The air is crisp tonight, the wind fresh and sharp. I can imagine this moon sailing over a vast dark ocean, presiding over the battle between the seasons. Yesterday the heat seemed to be winning, but today was grey and continually cooling, until tonight when the moon checked in, the tide was definitely withdrawing from sunny beaches, sandals and sunblock. Back we slip into sleeves and sweaters for one more shining evening. The moon's brightness promises barefoot walks with dancing black shadows and glowing white breakers, but not tonight; it is a promise for another moon, next month perhaps. This moon is the messenger, hurrying on over rolling waves whipped into foam by the last whispers of winter, carrying the news of summer coming soon, just over the horizon.

Snow Moon

This moon is a whisper, sshh-ing over the shining face of the silent snow. Hold your breath or you won't see it. Breathe the chill air, you will feel it. This moon can see you; it sees me; it's a bright eye with a twinkle smiling at the night world.

Maybe it smiles because it sees its face here, reflecting back in whiteness the divine blessing of night light. Maybe it smiles because it sees me shining here, lifted by the transcendent beauty of winter night.

Maybe my heart's song brings the moon a smile, the childhood rhyme that comes to mind when I look up at night: I see the moon, and the moon sees me . . . 

Please do sing along. 

Another Taste of Moonshine

Smooth and round a day ago, the lemon gelato moon has begun to melt, flattening from the top downward, and its light is puddling in the mist surrounding its base.

December Moon

This sky is the color "midnight blue" from a box of sixty-four Crayola crayons with sharpener, and it's as featureless as the surface of that wax stylus when it was brand-new, shiny-smooth, as yet unmarked by fingernails or other crayons, still sharp and unbroken in its pristine wrapper with the neatly lettered, mysterious name. I wasn't allowed to stay up until midnight, of course, but this crayon, with its honest childhood smell, promised to show me what it would look like if I could see the sky at that late hour.

It isn't midnight now; it's barely dark, and the moon is just beginning its climb from the horizon into that smooth, flat, midnight blue sky. The moon is pale buttercream yellow tonight, but it isn't soft-edged like a frosted cupcake. Instead it is as sharply round as the circles an art teacher cuts from construction paper, circles I try in vain to copy with compass and tracing patterns and round-tipped scissors. The moon's edges are so sharp, in fact, that the sky looks as if some gigantic teacher has cut one of her perfect circles from it, and I can see through the dark into a world of light beyond, a world where  beautiful and warm and welcoming people are smiling and waiting to meet me, shining a light to show me the way in.

I think if I can get there, they won't even mind that my circles are a little pointy.

November Moon

I wish I had a camera - or knew how to use a camera - to take a picture of the moon.

I think of the moon as a friend. She is a companion in my evening walks, an encourager in my morning drives. I like to smile at the moon and imagine faraway loved ones smiling back.

I thought, as I watched this month the growing fullness of the moon, that I'd like to take a picture when she was round and silver in my sky. I can't get the camera to see what I see, though. Maybe I'll make notes about this moon, this November moon, in the year of our Lord 2013, and maybe I'll be able to compare this moon with other moons to come.

This moon, tonight, is just past full. A tiny slice has been taken from the upper right curve of her fullness. I saw her first in open sky, but my most familiar view is from my back porch, through trees that have shed at this point a little over half their leaves. If I'd been able to take a  picture, it would have shown black, mostly bare branches, and a few mixed deciduous leaves still deciding whether to stay or go. The moon's face would have been white against a black, cloudless sky. I missed seeing the fullest moment because we had heavy rains last night. The evening air is cool and crisp like the moonlight, and the wet leaves covering the porch send shiny smiles back upward.

Hello, moon. Thanks for the smiles.