Moon glow

and the map of light

When I went out last night with Rocky, I looked up, saw the moon and gasped as if I’ve never seen the moon before. It happens every time. The moon captivates me, always compelling - the shape of it, the color, the glow, the position in the sky.

I stood there in my bare feet and gazed at it, almost full with its bright halo.

I remember as a child, catching a glimpse of the moon in the daytime sky and feeling a crush of magical energy - The moon! During the day! The moon on the playground in the middle of the endurance challenge that was school, whispered to me from another world.

The moon speaks and enchanting language, sings a music only the soul can hear, reflects shimmering light onto the water we need to drink in order to survive.

The moon shows up in my artwork, more often than not.

I am currently writing a novel guided by the moon.

I have always been this way and will always be this way - the moon a mentor for me, a symbolic nudge, a way-shower.

Dress me as the moon, sit me in the moon, let me taste the moon on the back of my tongue.

It will never become routine to me, the moon glow. It will surprise and delight me every time. For the rest of my life, when I look to the sky and see the moon, the cells of my body will flood with gratitude.

It will never be mundane.

But paying attention to the phase of the moon brings me back to earth. Noticing where the moon is in its cycle in the sky and its turn around the year, shows me where I am on the map of life.

On the new moon, I write a list of dreams, goals, intentions.

On the full moon, I let go of things no longer useful, whatever is too heavy to carry.

I read horoscopes.

I place my mason jar of water in the garden.

I write prayers and watch them burn.

I float in a tub of hot salt water.

I walk with the moon, talk to the moon, feel the moon in my bones, and yet I will never know the moon, not the way I know the sun with its blazing heat and vitamin D.

Tomorrow the moon will reach fullness and I will open a new blank page in my journal and together we will make a notation, the moon and I, about what have discovered so far this year, what I’ve put to rest, and where I might be going.

I don’t seek to harness the moon. I don’t want to walk on its surface. I open myself to its magic and feel it humming in my blood.

The moon knows me like no one else and loves me still.