Waxing Crescent Phase

Lately I have found myself drawn to random phrases that I hear on the radio.  When the SpaceX debacle-that-wasn’t-a-failure happened, the explanation for the explosion resonated with me.  I felt its pain.  I, too, often experience an unplanned rapid disassembly.    Sometimes in public.

Tonight as I threw some bottles into my recycle, I caught a glimpse of the moon.  My computer’s calendar told me its phrase.  Mesmerized, I gazed upward, oblivious to the mosquitoes batting themselves against my face.  Then I stood on a bench,  leaning against my door to steady my arms.  I lifted my little Canon PowerShot, set on manual, and fiddled with the dial.  I channeled my friend Dave Michael and pressed, gingerly at first, eyes squinting.  Above my neighbor’s house, the sliver of light gleamed in the inky depths of a spring sky.  The moon in its waxing crescent phrase mirrored the tiny hopeful flicker of my spirit.  

I took twenty images.  I here present only one.  Now I’m dragging my wobbly legs, my aching joints, and my lonely heart, to bed.   Through the parted curtains of the transom window, I will watch the Moon until my eyes grow heavy and my muscles release the tension which compels them to remain vertical.  I will drift to sleep under the pale, watchful eye of the patient moon.

It’s nighttime, nearly the end of the twenty-second day of the one-hundred and twelfth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

The New Moon
by Sara Teasdale

Day, you have bruised and beaten me,
As rain beats down the bright, proud sea,
Beaten my body, bruised my soul,
Left me nothing lovely or whole—
Yet I have wrested a gift from you,
Day that dies in dusky blue:
For suddenly over the factories
I saw a moon in the cloudy seas—
A wisp of beauty all alone
In a world as hard and gray as stone—
Oh who could be bitter and want to die
When a maiden moon wakes up in the sky?

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One thought on “Waxing Crescent Phase

  1. Dave Michael

    I’m flattered and honored that you thought of me while chasing the moon with your Canon. I too sometimes experience “unplanned rapid disassembly,” but at this stage in my life I believe I’m always experiencing slow inevitable disassembly.

    When younger I rarely thought about this stage of my life, and when I did, I found it a bit frightening. Now that I’m here I look forward without fear. Looking back I see all I have experienced in seven and a half decades under that same moon that reminded you of me. It wasn’t all easy. It did not all feel good at the time, but it got me where I am and I’m content.

    I have no legacy of big or great achievements, but perhaps knowing people think of me, even in brief moments, is a legacy for which I should be proud.

    Corinne, I see beautiful pictures of the west. I think about fighting injustice, and I think about you. Like all of us you have you moments of “unplanned rapid disassembly,” but I look at you and see a small but powerful woman who gathers up the pieces, comes back, reassembles and has it all together.

    I’m proud to have you as a friend.

    Reply

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