A Woman Who Speaks to the Moon
I have given up the calendar.
I follow the moon now —
her slow insistence,
her monthly dying and return,
the way she doesn't apologize
for going dark.
I am learning that from her.
At the new moon I write down
what I am ready to begin.
Small words on small paper.
A candle the color of intention.
The cats settling around me
like they know something is happening
even if it has no name in their language.
It has a name in mine.
I want to stop being afraid of my own wanting.
I want to grow like the vine grows —
without asking permission,
toward whatever light there is.
I fold the paper.
I hold it over the flame.
I let it become smoke
because some prayers
are only meant to be breathed
into the air
and released.
The waxing moon says: build.
So I build.
I tend the small things.
I water what I planted in the dark
and watch for the first pale reaching.
The full moon says: feel it.
So I stand outside in the late night,
bare feet on the cold ground,
and feel the earth remembering
that I belong to her
the way the deer belongs,
the way the weed belongs,
the way everything that grows
without being asked to
belongs —
not by permission.
By nature.
The waning moon says: let go.
And oh, how I have practiced this.
The releasing of what clutched me.
The long names of old grief
I finally stopped carrying
like stones in both pockets.
I set them on the earth
and the earth took them.
That is what she does.
She takes everything back eventually.
She is not sentimental about it.
She composts the beautiful and the ruined
with equal tenderness
and makes something new
of all of it.
I am trying to be like that.
At the dark moon I go inward.
I sit with what is quiet.
The house breathes around me.
The candles burn low.
I do not perform anything for anyone.
This is the sacred ordinary —
the cup of tea,
the cat on the windowsill watching the dark,
the pen moving slow across the page,
the spell that is not smoke and herbs
but simply attention —
the decision to be fully here
in this body,
on this earth,
under this sky
that has never once
forgotten my name.
The moon rises again.
She always does.
And I,
who have died a few small deaths of my own
and returned,
understand her now
in the way that only the returned
can understand anything —
with the whole body.
With both hands open.
With gratitude so large
it has no edges
and nowhere to end.