May 7, 2012

A quiet start to the work week, clouded over and pale, as if the weekend drained the sky and it will take a day or two to recover.  There is not even a little breeze, and only the mockingbird singing.  However, there was the deepest blue still, and I look forward to that, and to prove it is Monday, the school bus just rounded the corner and sped off to gather the children like wilted flowers.  <chuckle>  It seems even those with the energy of youth often find it flagging on Monday morning.

This weekend was the super moon, or mega moon some called it, at least the moon got some notice.  It's amazing how just a little difference can garner so much attention.  That difference is enough to make us write articles about it, actually go out and look at it, pay some attention to the world we live in.  This morning I guess I am still thinking about the moon, but I am ready to bring it back into the realm of the ordinary. <smile> And this is one of my favorite poems, and yes <sigh> I have a lot of them.

Night Light

The moon is not green cheese.

It is china and stands in this room.

It has a ten-watt bulb and a motto:

Made in Japan.

Whey-faced, doll-faced,

it's closed as a tooth

and cold as the dead are cold

till I touch the switch.

Then the moon performs

its one trick:

It turns into a banana.

It warms to its subjects,

it draws us into its light,

just as I knew it would

when I gave ten dollars

to the pale clerk

in the store that sold

everything.

She asked, did I have a car?

She shrouded the moon in tissue

and laid it to rest in a box.

The box did not say Moon.

It said This side up.

I tucked the moon into my basket

and bicycled into the world.

By the light of the sun

I could not see the

moon under my sack of apples,

moon under slab of salmon,

moon under clean laundry,

under milk its sister

and bread its brother,

moon under meat.

Now supper is eaten.

Now laundry is folded away.

I shake out the old comforters.

My nine cats find their places

and go on dreaming where they left off.

My son snuggles under the heap.

His father loses his way in a book.

It is time to turn on the moon.

It is time to live by a different light.

Nancy Willard

Here the moon is an ordinary thing, comforting and present.  The litany of everyday things, slab of salmon, clean laundry, milk and bread, the two things Dad always got when he couldn't remember what he was sent for <chuckle> the things that are so ordinary you don't notice until they are gone or changed.  It's nice to be reminded of them, pleasures of family, of an ordinary Monday, that will vanish like the mega moon, but for a few moments will be noticed, with the sky turning a pale orange, and two cardinals suddenly in the branches singing.