The World About to Turn

I wrote this the day before Ivy was born. I could feel the change coming, and the heavens seemed to reflect this sense of being "in-between" one reality and another. 

~

7 am, and I am alone in the quiet downstairs at dawn. I woke to the subtle glow of pink in the east, and over the river’s source the sun will soon rise. All this I will welcome from the dining room window. Yet in the kitchen and in the west, the beautiful full moon still lingers, suspended round and gold, but whose glory will soon fade and fall beyond the pines on the hill. 

I don’t know where to look. At the fullness of this moon which I will not see again, which lingers as if to bid me farewell and keep me a few minutes longer in its power, or at the changing colours of a sky awakening to new light.

I am in the in-between. Between the setting of the moon and the rising of the sun. Between the calm beauty of winter and the ruddy rush of spring. Present in a world where the two are meeting, yet I cannot see their coming together. I can only look west or east.

Softly now I pace the floor, not wanting to miss either wonder. The moon is falling fast, and soon I will have no choice.

And yet…

It is, after all, the same light which draws me to both. The beautiful fullness of all that has been, now quietly sinking, is lit by the energy of what lies ahead. They are not opposites. Their dance is part of this greater turning, the “marvel” of our blue-green sphere. 

I pause at the kitchen window. The moon is barely visible behind one of the great pines, who will brush it with a final kiss and tuck it behind the horizon. Good night, moon. Well have you shone.

And now the dining room fire is crackling, and another row of pines is shocked into silhouette by a bright patch of light, and I am sitting by the window, waiting, waiting, for the sky to break wide and the sun to fling its beams into the valley.

There are these brief moments in which I can see neither moon nor sun. And yet there is light. There is beauty in this hush of in-between, in the being of waiting.

I am held here, in just the right place, till just the right time.

Ah, here it comes . . . a fire so bright I cannot look, only be seen . . . the day has come. 

~lg