“Did you see the moon?”
Over a decade of owning a smartphone, I’m still taking bad photos of the moon. In life—and in this memory—the moon is full and round, almost red in an unrelenting but beautiful night sky. I stand still under the great moon and stare forward; it looms, it watches, it soothes, it lingers.
I snap a photo. A fool’s errand, really. Instead of large, round, and glorious, the moon is a small and grainy pinhole. A tiny little box, so far away in a flat sky.
Maybe celestial beauty is best reserved for witnessing in person.
I tend to notice the moon on walks with my dog. Pepper, nose to the ground, sniffing at spaces between fences and blades of grass. I nod at the moon and say in my head, Hi, moon. It’s a simple ritual.
Still, I keep taking bad photos of the moon. Why stop now?
*
When I first started spellwork, I only casted them under the cover of night. There had to be a moon in the sky, even if it was just a sliver.
Just a narrow ray of moonlight to witness my own magic.
*
“The moon is juicy, and so full of secrets,” my tarot teacher says. I stare at the card, two dogs howling at the moon.
It’s a diamond-dusted container, getting it’s fill of sea waves and cries of help and calls of love from all of the people below. I have been both sides of that moon coin: breathing night’s joy into my face and bathing night’s tears into my skin. There are things about me that only the moon witnessed.
There are two dogs inside of me.
*
Poets adore the moon. I am no exception.
So many of my poems are desirous and a bit irreverent, dripping with sacred beauty and yes, an ever-present moon.
The moon is a jewel, a frosty opal. The moon is a crystal container for the unknown.
The moon is a temptress and a goddess that saturates works of art for centuries. It drips whispers into oil paintings, it saunters through poetry like a little white cat, and it spins a thread through music like no other.
I am love-possessed by the moon and for the moon. I study Selene and read her mythology over and over again. Her stewardship of the moon lives in my mind like a polished stone.
Perhaps it’s trite to craft narratives and sensual spells about the illuminated orb in the night. Perhaps waxing on the moon is overused, some might say. Why stop now?
*
Did you see the moon? It’s so beautiful tonight.