Morning Walk with the Moon

            The full moon waited overnight for me.  She called to me through the east window as I went to bed last night, but I pretended I didn’t really hear.  But this morning, my internal mother joins in the call and I am roused out of the house in the early morning darkness.  Her cold beauty now floats in the western sky.  I turn and walk toward the light.

            The morning is cold, but I have the hat I bought thirty years ago at an EMS store on the second floor of the now, I am sure, defunct Hartford Mall.  We call it my duck hunting hat.  Pale green with a visor, ear flaps and fuzzy inside, it’s the kind of classic that remains out of style throughout the decades.  But I am devoted to its unconditional warmth and consistent refusal to bend to convention. 

            The moon sticks firmly in the black of the lower sky – unbothered by the headlights of the few early morning cars headed in to work.  I walk by the darkened church whose billboard instructs me to wait for Lord Jesus and eventually come to the never-ending lights of the 24-hour convenience store that rests directly under the moon.  I buy one quart of whole milk and some half-and-half, though I know I should buy only fat free milk.  I walk home.

            Though the light has not yet come, I know this day will not be shorter than yesterday.  We have crossed a timeless threshold.  The ancient cells in my body rejoice.  Perhaps we have not been abandoned to the darkness.  Perhaps God will send the light and not let us perish in this cold. 

I know that longer days and more sunlight come long before the warmth, but I am somehow buoyed by it all.  For the short green amaryllis bud in the pot on my desk and for me too, something is stirring.