Full Moon

Today, I was going like a bat out of hell. So much to do. So many errands. And toward the end of day, I was driving up to northern Vermont, up towards the border region to Canada. It was going to be an hour-long drive to return a car I had borrowed. Up to a small town amidst the last hills of the Green Mountains and Appalachian chain before the flat lands of Quebec.

And just as I was heading north and enjoying the unusually late display of fall colors -- red, orange, yellow, with still some green mixed in -- off to the right, I caught the majestic top half of the full moon cresting over the colorful range.

I don't know how many poems I have written about the full moon. It consumes me. The moon is the muse to whom I am enslaved. I cannot escape. I cannot help but become full of feelings of ... so much that is ineffable. And yet I feel drawn to constantly trying. Like Baskin with his half-man, half-bird imagery.

The full moon sagged wan and heavy in the fading daylight on the crest of a particularly colorful mountain ridge. The sun was still in full reign of the light, and so at first my eyes glanced by the white ghost, which I at first assumed was just a cloud, but then ... its imagery was too specific for a cloud, and my eyes darted back: Yes. Yes, the full moon. I felt my body go slack, as if I was finally back with my lover. But this lover is aloof. And, so, I am helpless to approach and left with just that feeling: of being in the presence of an aloof lover.

As I was saying: The full moon sagged wan and heavy, barely perceptible except to the devoted eye. The highway curved and temporarily denied my worship. Then the road, heightened and flattened, giving me a glimpse. Ahh, but then disappeared as I had to dip until it rose again and the ridgeline gave me another brief view. It was as if I was stealing glances from my bed while she was walking to and from her vanity and sink and robe hook.

I anxiously awaited her full presentation.

By the time, I was off the interstate and onto state roads, I knew I would be heading straight east. Awaiting her entrance. I know these roads well, and remember the many times before when I have enjoyed craning my neck to steal a glance, then looking back at the road, then back at the moon. A constant attempt to pay attention to safety with brief allowances to the pleasure of pure abandonment.

The jealous sun eventually relinquishes. Her last assertion is to taint all in deep yellow, pink, orange, and red, which gives the flaming hills a crescendo of color. But this jealousy is the sun's undoing. Because just then, I take a turn in the road by the Abbey. And there is the sight that just slays me:

To the east is a line of mountains against a colorful sky: Jay Peak, with its loyal entourage: Little Jay and the Cold Hollow Mountains. They look gentle now with their soft edges against the purple-bluing sky. But I remember getting lost in them once, and came to fear their relentless disregard for a human life wandering among their vastness. But that fear is subsided now like the reverence of a powerful deity that you instinctively feel must be benevolent.

Dead ahead of me, to the east, are the Cold Hollows and Big Jay and Little Jay. To my right, a river -- the Mississquoi -- winding its crooked way toward me, down from those mountains, over rocks now because at the end of summer the water is low and creates ripples and small rapids.

And rising steadily, the full moon. She has freed herself from the horizon's gravity. She floats freely upward. Full now and bright. Almost white, but still with enough tint against a purpling sky to make out details. And shining a shimmer of her light in the river.

This. This is what I write poems about. What does this mean? I know it has meaning that I cannot fully capture, no matter how many lines, how perfect the meter or rhyme. I can never capture this. This effect. This feeling. This more-than-what-this-is.

I wish I could.

Do I wish I could? Is it possible that I appreciate that this one thing in my life -- this full moon -- is ever just slightly beyond my grasp? Does my inability to describe all of my emotions in one poem, in one letter, in one essay keep me writing?

Tonight I will fall asleep my images of the full moon. I will confuse the full moon with my lover. With my muse. With goddesses of ancient civilizations. I will confuse her and be confused by her.