Golden

Last night, I was walking along the road when suddenly the Moon appeared, suspended in the black sky: bright gold. The Harvest Moon! I thought, but it isn't the season for harvest. . . Drawn like a moth to a candle, I changed my course, leaving the road and walking across the field toward the trees, toward the golden Moon. The frozen grass crunched beneath my shoes, and the cold seeped into my feet.

Behind the trees (their bare branches like lines of ink), the Moon hung. I have never seen it so warm. The Moon was amber, honey, copper, like a huge coin, a physical presence, ancient and alive, burnished gold. I walked toward it, transfixed. Its edges did not bleed into the blackness at all, almost as though it were a hole punched out of the sky, revealing the warm, welcoming light behind the coldness of space. But the Moon was too solid and bright to be a hole. Rather, it was a golden disk laid on a black velvet cloth. . . But the sky has no wrinkles, and the Moon was standing, not lying down, not sitting.

In the end, the Moon is the Moon, and anything else is a diminishment. Each time I see the full Moon, I am pierced to the core again.

I walked on, finally, when the chill soaked my bones. The Moon vanished into the horizon. But its golden light stayed. I walked like my pockets were full of gold coins, warm between my cold fingers.

Lunacy

Waiting outside for a friend, I looked up and saw: the Moon. Clouds were shifting and boiling across the indigo sky, changing from silver to slate to pearl to black, in the pale light of the white orb. Through the winter branches of the stripped trees, her face shone steadily. I did not see her ancient stars, or think about her waning and waxing. Tonight the Moon was full. She hung in the sky illuminating the restless clouds with a steady and silent shine.

I stared Moonward, and the Moon stared back. What does my small scarred face look like through the black branches? What clouds boil around my eyes? The Moon stared as though none of it mattered.

I was the one who turned away first, to gaze at the trees standing like patient giants and the bright streetlamps that blazed like cold stars.

Tonight, I understood how one might worship the Moon.

Thankful

...for a window that looks out on trees and sky.

Nothing brightens the mood of a homework-plagued student like happening to glance out the window and seeing the sky shrouded in bright pink and streaked with shining gold. The graceful bare branches of the maple tree sliced across the clouds, precise as patterns of ink. It took my breath away.

The sky is a transient painting, a study in color and space. The sunset is so beautiful because it is gone in ten minutes. Pay attention, or you'll miss it.