Moon Speck

I stepped out and saw it, the gibbous waning moon suspended high over the western horizon. And, I was drawn to it. In the mid-morning sunlight, in a bright blue dome of exalted space, it was fixed there, as though it knew its place and I did not. It looked right at me with its dead stare of life, like an old friend of years, but one you see less and less of over time even though you live in the same town. My sad old friend the moon, we had some times. We still do, don’t we old friend.


The moon and I go back, my silver white soul-mate gracing me with your face, burning my eyes the first time I focused on you with my newly purchased telescope. My eyes, having been around the sun a mere twelve times, knew nothing of you when I focused my instrument on your face the first time and became your friend, your loving friend. I studied every valley and sea, memorizing the lines and shadows. It is o’ so hard when you realize there are things you can never do. It is even harder when you have a whole life ahead. Even the certain dreams of a boy, who does nothing but dream so many dreams, knows the technological certainties of never embracing such a distant and wondrous friend. The pain lives in your shadow. You would kill me in your airless jacket of nothing, 250,000 miles from my home, and you would not care. You terrify me. Yet, I dream to walk your valleys, to climb your mountains, to touch your face with my own flesh, the dream will never stop haunting me. I yearn to touch you, and turn to see my home, my blue orb, fixed and alive, suspended high over your own black horizon. If only . . . I’ve always looked for you, waited, and set my clock with your fixed arc.

Today, you look at me again. And you pull at me the way you do. You tell me what I am, and I am thankful. You wait on me too, don’t you? But, I know you don’t set yourself to my wandering tempo. No, you wait to tell me what you told me the first time I loved you, step out, step out, and step on.

I stepped out and saw it, I smelled it, and I was ready to live a day of life, to take life with all the spirit I could give away. You push me as you pull me. You the fixed. Thank you. You jostle me, and I know what I must do. And I breathed deeply again to smell the air, gauging the day the way I do at my first encounter with the day. One can tell a great deal from the smell of a day, the waxing and waning of the seasons, an approaching front, the condition of the trees, exhaust fumes, the dampness, the dryness, the fog on the crest of the hills, south of town . Its part of my ritual, my way of putting myself in synchronization with the day. I do it, not to breath in life, but I give life to the day, to become part of it, to breath my contribution of gases to the day, to put myself in the game, to announce my presence. I do not shout it, that would be rude. However, I assert myself to the day in this way. I must, or I become the fixed, the dead, the unliving.

And, I am drawn to you still. I can not, I will not, I must not take my eyes off you while I have some extra time this morning. You pull me down the driveway, I ignorantly think I can get closer to you if I walk to you, I laugh at myself, and then forget myself. These moments are not a time for self. I do not notice the wires crossing your face that bring power to my house. It is you I see. And, why today do you face a speck at me, a speck of green-yellow and brown. Yes, why this tiny speck? I remove my glasses to locate the speck and put them back on without success. Your face has no speck, now I see. O’ no, you are not changing on me yet. You pull me for wondrous reason, and now I see. I see. The juvenile hummingbird that stands upon the wire, stands in your face. And I smile. And I forget you for now, the way a child forgets the parent when the gift is opened on christmas morning. There is only the excitement and the joy of seeing, of seeing the sparks.

To see the tiny speck, I strain and focus my twin instruments to a point twenty feet from the ground. So, I try the advise of Annie Dillard. Show me something I knock. Show me something that I seek everyday. I ask you for the proof of what I am, the raptor that preys upon you? Come on, show me the sparks! I stamp my foot on asphalt. Nothing. Then, with an outburst of green-yellow, I was answered. You enchant me with your aerobatics, not fixed. Your leaving the wire and hovering and bobbing plays with my eyes. Your up and down, your rapid shifts in vertical direction are astonishing, without smoothness, without sharpness. A mere warm up silly man. Hovering, not flying straight, you disappear in less than a second as you rise straight upward over one hundred feet in the air, hovering! Not flying upward. What, I ask myself, I have never seen this from your kind, not this extreme. You answer with a wingless dive so frightening, I pray for your family. Silly man. Your last instant unfurling of feather and air-weight bone brings you to the same wire, the same spot. I smile my silly smile. But, the show is not over yet. Your mate arrives to lift you as before, in your tandem bobbing action I loose focus, my eyes burn and blur from the tears. And, I am aware of myself again.

I walk to my truck and smile my silly smile as my green-yellow friends continue to dance, a pulsation of life and air. I wonder if I smelled them today? Was that the smell of green-yellow, or the smell of the pull? Maybe it was just the fog on the hills.

O’ my friend, you do watch for me. Thank you. And, I will always watch for you. I see now that there is no time not worth living, no moment not worth seeing the sparks. The taker of life and giver of death knows who I am, and I receive it as the moon, and the hummingbirds, and the smell of the day, and I give to it myself, my own Ki. It is not fixed, nor am I. There is no fear, there is only life, which is God. It is the magnificent beauty of the terrifying world that I seek. It is my narcotic. My life. My death. I am drawn to it, haunted by it.