 |
Hunting the Moon By Eric Francis I step into the snap chill of the April night and before the motion-detectors see me and flood the world with incandescent glare, I see the Moon, in the clouds, in the trees, in the east. Nothing could have prepared me for such a sudden breath: Not spending the better part of three days studying the energetics of planets, not the secret desire to be here, not anything. I look at her. She looks at me, low and still and large. My mind interjects with a question: What sign is it in? Hmm. I don’t know. I do know there was an eclipse this morning. I have read that Saturn conjoining the Moon can thwart the emotions, that Saturn square the Moon is the symbol of working out a long history and what some call karma. She disappears into the clouds, and I am safe. One step and I am seen by the floodlights, which burst in and erase the entire sky. Minutes pass as I drive, and I stop at your house. Smeagol is playing Beware of Dog. I say hello but he ignores me. Now I step away from the porch, closer to the night time, and she is back, lighting up the world. Alice Bailey says she is a veil. Some say she is a lens of consciousness. I say she is silent and listening: listening to the silence. The buzz of a streetlight, some dogs barking, an occasional engine passing on Main Street, only make the silence louder. She is listening to me stand here with nothing to say, struck dumb, moon-struck, my boots solid in my two footprints. The Earth will turn and she will seem to traverse the night, and in the dark of morning she will set against the shadow of the Catskills, and I will watch from the ridge as we disappear. --- Rosendale, NY, circa April 15, 1995 |
