Sculpted Night

There are many good ways to walk: in the sun, under a wide blue sky, in the morning with the sweet grass wet underfoot, on the cusp of night as the last rays of gold burn and fade from the sky, in the Autumn when the leaves rustle and dance around your ankles and the air smells of earth and red and brown, in the quiet stillness of a snowstorm. Tonight, though, as we teeter on the edge of Summer, when the moon was pregnant and amber in the sky, it seemed much of the world stopped to marvel at the illusion of her size, a quiet settling over the park and streets. Duncan and I stopped, too, to marvel at our smallness, which is a good thing to do every now and then. If the sun makes us bold, the moon should make us humble and reverent. I caught my breath as it slid slowly over the horizon, the night turning dark around her, the stars seeming to move out of her way. The world seemed frozen as Duncan milled at my feet while I snapped pictures and composed odes in my head. The leaves on the trees, silvered on their edges, ceased their rustling. The grass seemed to rise up to meet her. The stones and pebbles trapped for all time in the street cement glistened like moving water. Strange how things can move while standing so still. And yet the night still seemed transformed into a vast sculpture garden and as I put the camera away I had to wonder, were watching her or was she, an admirer of strange art, watching us?

"Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting." (Nathaniel Hawthorn)