Remember looking up
and seeing the slender moon
glowing white against the deep pitch
of predawn? Not a star to be seen,
but there was one bright planet
beaming steady below that slip of moon.
Remember how beautiful it was?
How it felt as if you could reach up
and grab on to the moon’s hooked tip
and just hang there for a while,
swinging through the darkness on its light
the way you once hung on the monkey bars
and made of your weight and momentum a game.
Remember how, in that predawn moment,
there was so much fear and so much ache,
and it took some effort to lift your head
to look at that moon, but you did, you looked,
and because you did, you felt it,
the way beauty tethers us to the world,
never fixing anything, but reminding us
the ache isn’t the whole story,
that there is also the marvelous,
the generous, the good.
Posts Tagged ‘moon’
One Peekaboo
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, play on July 23, 2026| 4 Comments »
hoping it finds me
hiding in the shadow of the blue spruce
that glorious half-moon
A Great Shining
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, connection, impossible dream, love, moon, peace on January 23, 2026| 1 Comment »
inspired by Maya Stein’s 10-line poem form
What if, in this moment, every person on earth thinks of someone who makes us feel cherished, known, safe? What if we let ourselves linger in this moment of connection? What might happen inside each body? What might happen in the world as in unison our breaths begin to even and slow? Would the pulsing of our hearts begin to synch, the way heart cells in a petri dish come to keep time with each other? What is earth if not a great experiment in which we are all both observer and observed? How long could it last, this rhythmic communion between jailor and prisoner, oppressor and oppressed, between fighter and fighter, maker and destroyer, parent and child, liar and believer, all of us thinking of love? Foolish, perhaps, to imagine such impossible moments. But more foolish not to imagine such things. Even now, I’m thinking of someone. It feels like the moon is inside me.
How We Momentarily Become the Moon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, becoming, connection, moon on January 3, 2026| 2 Comments »
In the dark house
we watch the moon
rise through the window,
watch as its fullness
climbs into the sky.
For everything we see,
so much we miss.
But in this moment,
your hand in mine,
we give the moon
all our attention until
every part of us,
even our wounds, are
shining.
Walking at Night after the First Big Snow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, love, moon, snow, winter on December 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I want to live
my life like
a night made
bright by
moonlight
and snow—
there is
nothing I can
hold onto,
nothing I can
even touch, but
there is no
doubt how real
the light is,
no denying how
that faraway
light reflects
to hold me.
Call and Response
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, moon, nature on August 11, 2025| 2 Comments »
for Cindy
Are you there? she said
as she came to my door.
I’m here, I said.
Are you there? she said.
I’m here, I said.
Come, she said,
and we walked to the field
where behind the ridge
the glow of the moon
had begun to appear.
We whispered as we waited
for the moon to rise,
whispered of dreams
and legacies, until, at last,
the fullness had rounded
into the sky,
and we said goodnight,
both of us knowing
we’d witnessed a miracle—
not the miracle of moonrise,
though that, too,
but the alchemy of two hearts
choosing to meet
the world together.
Perception: A Sonnet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, night, perspective, sonnet, walking on February 11, 2025| 8 Comments »
I take a walk with my whirling thoughts
and the near-full moon and the dark,
and for a time, all that seemed large
in me is no less large, but it’s also a dot,
a blip when compared to the whole
of the night, as if the entirety of my life
and the life of my country and the life
of the earth could all fit in a fourteen-line poem
with two lines left blank. Because nothing I write
seems to touch how vast, how sublime it is—
the snow moon rising above red cliffs—
only space can convey how humbling it is, the night.
.
Immensity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged immensity, las vegas, moon, perspective on November 23, 2024| 12 Comments »
Just past Circus Circus,
I see it down a side street,
the half moon low on the horizon,
nowhere near as bright or big
as the giant clown smiling above me.
I thrill in my certainty the moon
has grown no smaller.
But how real it seems in this moment,
this moment when the moon looks
littler than a soup bowl
for a giant neon clown
on the Las Vegas strip.
It’s enough to make me think
that other things that seem
so large are not. Enough
to make me long to be a student
of perspective. How quickly
the world changes when
we change the way we see it.
How powerful the invitation
to want to see what is true.
Still Life on My Mother’s Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, happiness, moment, moon, painting, puzzle, time on November 15, 2024| 9 Comments »
In the painting no one did,
we don’t see the Beaver Moon,
but it is there, full and shining
on the other side of the earth.
What we do see, as if from a bird’s
eye view: the hands of three
generations of women hovering
above a square wood table.
They hold bright puzzle pieces,
and beneath their fingers, a vibrant garden
has begun to emerge.
What we don’t see is the light
and gauzy conversation—the kind
that swoops, swallow-like, through
the field of the moment, the kind
that swerves and lifts, suggesting a space
unconstrained by straight edges.
In the painting no one did, the garden
is always blooming, the hands never age,
nothing sad ever happens,
the candles on the cake, also not pictured,
are never blown out, the banter
never ends, and like the unseen moon,
the love is there, reflecting, radiant,
shining beyond the frame.
Contact Shine
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, love, moon, shine, snow on December 26, 2023| 7 Comments »
Sometimes we don’t know
what we’re capable of
until we find ourselves
in the light of another;
suddenly we’re radiant,
downright incandescent—
as tonight, the blue snow
gathered the light of the full moon
in its facets and it flashed and sparkled,
though the snow owns no shine of its own.
This is how it is with my heart—
when I am with you,
it becomes a luminous living thing
and I barely recognize it,
resplendent-sprung and bright-winged,
where just moments before
it was dull. Even the memory of you
can make me shine.
As if nothing is lost.
As if we are made of memory.
Beneath the Big Moon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, night, past, shadow on June 1, 2023| 4 Comments »
I walk in the chill,
and the past
walks beside me,
smooths my tears,
holds my hand,
faithful as evening,
gentle as a shadow.
By the time
I re-enter my home,
it has slipped
inside me again.
We walk through
the door
as one.
On All Souls
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged all souls, birthday, cemetery, day of the dead, moon, ohio on November 2, 2022| 8 Comments »
In the woods, in the dark
we stood amidst old gravestones,
their engravings mostly scrubbed by time.
And Jon played gong,
Robin played chimes
and Evie played bass recorder.
And Owl read of the wood,
Melissa spoke of good life
and I hummed and played the breath.
We spoke the names
of our beloveds who have left.
Some names were spoken
only in silence.
The half-moon joined our circle,
as if it, too, knew something
of loss. As if it were showing us
that sometimes what appears to be gone
is simply unseen.
We walked home in that half light.
One Near-Full Moon Rise
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, moon on May 15, 2022| 1 Comment »
no passport—
still this feral beauty
crosses my border
A Song in the Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged community, helping, light, lunar halo, moon, sharing, shine on May 10, 2022| 15 Comments »
It’s tiny hexagonal ice crystals
in the earth’s atmosphere
that create the bright halo
around the moon.
Think of it,
so many scraps of borrowed light—
so that I shine
becomes the song
of something
with no glow of its own.
Just because its science—
refraction and reflection—
doesn’t mean it’s not a miracle.
Just ask anyone who, for a time,
has lost their own light
then receives it from another
who received it from another,
and soon they find themselves
part of a radiant circle of light
where before
there was only ice.
On the Upward Swing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, moon, trust, whole on January 30, 2022| 6 Comments »
Barely a waning crescent,
the moon still shares enough light
to travel over two-hundred thousand miles
in less than two seconds.
It shines through the bedroom window,
its glow an ephemeral silver quilt.
It takes only the slenderest curve
to remind me the shape
of the whole. It takes only the barest
suggestion to know the enormity
of what is missing. Thank you
for these small proofs.
It takes so little momentum
to swing the pendulum
toward trust.
Waxing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged broken, death, loss, moon, parenting, son on October 11, 2021| 8 Comments »
Moon broken, my son said
when he was two,
and he pointed east
to the quarter moon.
Mommy fix it.
He believed I could.
I wanted to believe it, too,
wanted to believe
I could fix any broken thing—
the loose button on a doll,
the ripped page in a book,
a scraped up knee,
a tattered dream.
Tonight I gaze
at the low crescent moon.
I have lost my belief
in fixing.
Count me among
the broken things.
And my son is gone.
And my son is gone.
And the beautiful moon slips lower
into the almost dark.
Imagine
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, meeting the self, moon on February 28, 2021| 1 Comment »
driving south
through the mountains
watching the moonrise—
and around each corner,
thrilling as it rises again, again, again,
feeling luckier each time—
meeting the self
like that
On a Full Moon Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, bird song, moon, owl on February 27, 2021| 2 Comments »
The three-note song of the owl
opens the night
with a single repeated note.
Hoo hoo hoo.
Listening for the song again,
I find myself opening to silence.
Then there it is:
Hoo hoo hoo.
Scientists say
the owl is sending a message:
This is mine,
my territory, my space.
But instead of being repelled,
I’m pulled in.
I sing back to the owl
three resonant notes.
Hoo hoo hoo.
Not to stake my territory.
More out of admiration
for the power of a simple song.
It teaches me to trust
what is artless,
how sometimes simplicity
is what allows others, like me,
to sing along.
Permission
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, moon, softening on December 30, 2020| 5 Comments »
Funny on a full moon night
I think about brokenness.
After fifty years of proving
entropy with my life, with
my thoughts, some part of me
still wants to believe in perfection.
I’ve never once thought the moon
any less perfect for being partial.
Tonight, I give myself permission
to be broken. As if I could help it.
But something in the permission
lets me relax, lets me soften
as if I’m covered with moon-drunk snow.
Lets me soften like Erik Satie played low.
Let me see you, the moon seems to say,
just as you are. And I step outside
and the moon slips in.