So the Boyz and I went for our nightly walk a little while ago, and the growing moon beamed down on us like a doting parent. I felt bathed in it's loving silvery gold patina, as was the world around us.
The moon has no favorites when it's growing, it's generosity of light spills onto everything on the Earth below without judgement. Shadows form from its brightness, and my youngest small dog loomed large on the sidewalk ahead of me, puffed up in size by the moon's glow.
I love these night time walks, and though I often complain, quite bitterly, about the changing of the time that brings with it early darkness...I have to admit the night walks are my favorite time of the day.
Across the road from our street is a wooded area, a veritable oasis in the middle of this small city, where trees grow unharmed, and tiny wild animals and bird find homes. Sometimes, like tonight, I can hear the hushed chattering of nervous birds settling down for an evening's rest, or in the summer the single croak of a bullfrog on the pond's edge. I treasure this oasis, it will never be destroyed for I learned a few years ago to belongs to the small neighborhood it sits beside. Some of the neighbors, in their wisdom, recognized the value of its beauty and the safe haven it offers those furry and winged residents, and deeded this small area to the Audobon Society. I like that I can walk here at night on the sidewalk and have some small sanctuary of nature so close to my front door. It reminds me of home.
On our way back, as I looked up at the once large moon, now high above me and small as a button I am reminded how I used to love to stare up at this same moon as a child. This mythical, magical satellite rotating around us has been a focal point of so many humans for centuries. The legends created around its waxing and waning has been told over thousands of years to wide-eyed children who gazed solemnly at it in awe.
I can remember doing the same, taking an old bedspread to throw across the hood of my daddy's work truck and lay back to stare at it and the stars around it. On the nearly full moon the backdrop of sky is a muted royal blue canvas, and the stars twinkling are like silver glitter that has been scatterred upon it. On occasion I was lucky enough to see a shooting star, tossing my childish wishes upon it to fly through the sky and collide with the Earth in some distant place. No light pollution to drown out the stars or the moon, not there in Council, just the inky jet blue night with a moon as bright the headlight of the trains that passed by regularly.
Walking just now brought back these memories and my Muse whispered in my ear on the way home...go write it down. Go put these memories into words that will be here for you later, or for your friends or family. They too have gazed upon a brightly lit moon and had these same experiences.
Put it down for them as well, record this common bond of human experience for anyone who reads it might be able to say: "Oh, I've done that too!" Perhaps for them it might evoke some wonderful memory as well, still there in their brain but long buried in the hustle-bustle life we lead in the 21st century.
So here it is, and if you read it tonight, or in the next couple of nights...go outside, leave your television for a while, and gaze up at that gorgeous moon.
I promise, it will be smiling down on you, white gold light that will remind you of the child you once were.
Rose S. Williams-Southernstoryteller©2013
January 25th, 2013
