At this hour, the moon is low in the sky, hanging where it does not belong over the Nike Factory store, behind the flashing red light. Something like embarrassment fell over me in a shudder tonight, when I saw it in all of its old-fashioned glamour. You shouldn't be here. You're too good for this crowd.
I want to stand in the street and just point with my arm, direct traffic toward the moon, direct eyes, hearts, and minds to The Great Aged Cheese. Who else is looking tonight? Who else saw it and with me will stand in applause?
Why shouldn't we applaud the moon? And for that matter, the sun, and the mosses, the great shelves of cloud that shuttle through the city, week after week? Why shouldn't we applaud morning? and why not mid-afternoon? All of these things together are marvelous and ancient orchestrations, unseemly in grandeur and masterful in subtlety.
I am the flashing red light, a streak about to die out. The street on which I live is a blip, a scratch that will soon fade and smooth back into the great skin of things. I love and fear the sight of the moon. The old, old song rising with it reminds me of all the things I do not know, have not seen, will not live to tell. Hallelujah, Amen.
[painting: winslow homer, summer night]
2 comments:
Your writing is so beautiful I can't stand it. I want to write this on a piece of yellowed paper torn from the back of an old cloth-bound book and hang it above the old writing desk I don't have. Thank you for that inspiration. What your blog lacks in frequency, it more than makes up for in sheer magic per square-inch.
thank you, carrot quinn.
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