Full Pink Moon

It’s the golden hour, and all the plants are glowing as I make my way up the hill.  The sky is shocking, pink and blue and purple, as if suddenly bruising from its collision with the earth.  I want to reach up and comfort its throbbing beauty.  The turning leaves soak up the last bits of sun and radiate as if they were autumnal lanterns.  They light my way as the air turns dark.

The turning of the season and my northern-hemisphere body are at odds.  It’s nearly Beltane.  My blood wants to dance around fires throwing the cozy scarves and mittens of hibernation wantonly to the wind.  My skin is expectant with the warmth of new beginnings, and yet the gusts here are becoming harsher.  I push on.  It’s not fall for me.

As the final rays of the day tuck themselves in behind clouds and hills, I reach the well.  The very sight of the clearing tugs at something inside me.  I finger the stones, making them melt and turn to sand, as if they were an old lover who’d been waiting for my touch.

In response, I remove my shoes and socks.  My toes dig into the dirt and rocks dig back into my soles.  The breeze lifts my shirt and grazes my belly.  It’s all the impetus I need.  The wind keeps nibbling at me, encouraging me, and so I tie my clothes to the hawthorn tree.

It’s cloudy tonight and I know it’s no accident.  The moon is hiding in the shadow of the earth, tucked in the darkness of her cave as if in hibernation.  She’s just waiting for her moment.  It’s an up-side-down celebration here.  The leaves are beginning to saunter away from their branches.   The night is still pregnant with the potential of sprouts and seedlings, even as Antarctic winds raise mountain ranges of goose bumps on my skin.

I start a fire and I know you will be here soon.  I wonder how many logs and how much kindling we will need to last through the night.  The moon is flush and full.  Beneath my feet, the phlox creep further and further from the well.  The pink moss stretches its feelers toward unknown lands, testing whether those grounds hold lives that it can live.  The dainty flowers look up to the moon and howl, reflecting her full, surprised face back in their flushed cheeks.  They beam on a night like tonight.  They gather in such numbers and their blushing blazes so brightly that even the moon blushes back.

You come with logs for the fire and no words.  Before long we have our own sun flickering before us. “Ne’er cast a cloot ‘til Mey’s oot,” they warned us.  It’s not quite May, but it is time to cast our clothes.  The cold of the April wind nibbles at our skin and makes it blush, in brazen mimicry of the pink moon.  The light is deafening, and I am exposed, as are you.  The heat of the fire makes my frontside glow.  The cold of the April wind turns my backside pink.  I am round and glowing, a perfect salmon moon.

We dance in circles, falling into orbit around the fire.  I am drunk on the pollen wafting through the air, and red, yellow, and brown leaves swirl around me.  I can no longer tell whether I am surrounded by flames or trees or both.  Stars leap from the fire, embers fall from the sky.  I collapse into the embrace of the infinite.

Lost in space like this, there is no north and south, no spring or fall, only the endless expanse of new fires being lit.

 

 

Creative Commons love to phil dokas from flickr for the stunning photo!

Prompt: Myths in New Places

“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth–penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words… Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.” ” – Joseph Campbell

It never fails when I need something to write about to read folklore or mythology.  It’s like instant inspiration for me.  So many of the stories are so rich and yet so bare.  They feel like playgrounds to me.  They beg to be told from different perspectives.  They seem to yearn to have details filled in.  They taunt me with the questions, ‘But what happened after that?’

But this prompt is not about retelling.  This is an exercise in setting.  I will admit that I often do not give the setting of a story enough thought.  Setting changes everything.

Pick a random myth or folktale from the (amazing!) collection at the University of Pittsburgh’s website here.  Some fun things I’ve tried: tales starting with the same letter as my name, a character’s name —   you get the point.  Then spin a globe and pick a random place to set your story.  Or, better yet, use the antipodes map to set your story on the exact opposite side of the globe.  Set the story in modern day to change the setting even more.

I would be super interested in seeing what other people come up with, so if you do this, please share!

 

Creative Commons love to Tina Bell Vance, from flickr for the photo.  Please check out her work.  It is amazing!

The 366th Day (Leap Day 2012.)

February 28th was like every other day, until midnight, when nature, reassuringly, fell apart.  It seemed that the powers-that-be drew their heads between their shoulder blades and sheepishly conceded that time was not as sane and stable as you’d been told.  The year was out of line to us sun worshippers.  Five hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds out of order, give or take.  And for that, every four years, except every hundred years, but not every four hundred, the calendar needed to be slapped with an extra day.

But this isn’t just any extra day.  This day boils with the possibilities of being outside of time.  Clocks and calendars hold their breath as they wait impatiently for the sun to catch up.  The planets and stars saunter slowly across the sky as alarm clocks hold in their ringing and watches repeat the same ticks over and over again.  It almost seems that the sky is teasing Earth’s timepieces, moving in slow motion and even pausing, just because it could.

It was on such a day that she came to you in red petticoats, dressed all in white save for the scarlet blooming from beneath her skirts.  She bore a crooked smile. She was daring you, even before she spoke.  Her irises seemed three-dimensional; as if her pupils were planets whose gravity had attracted rings.  She was decked out in emeralds, on fingers and toes, and somehow it never occurred to you to wonder where they had come from.  She murmured something about Irish traditions that you knew you were not meant to hear and suddenly her hair flashed to crimson.  Just as suddenly, it was black again and indistinguishable from the sky.

She takes your hand and she leads you to the river.  It is silent, as if the water has stopped flowing. It’s too black to see them, but you are almost certain that boats are rooted in the current.  And just when you mean to tell her that you’ve got no time to give her:

“Marry me.”  It was not a question, but it was a proposition.  In the thick humidity of the night, the sky paused long enough for you to wonder what that would mean.  If time would continue its mundane march through schedules.  Or maybe, just maybe, the gravity of this moment would bring the spirals of galaxies to a halt.  Maybe a leap made on a night like this would cause the rest of time to hold its breath, head cocked, suspended in a date that did not exist.

You know already what would happen if you refused.  You would owe 12 pairs of gloves.  One pair for each month in the wobbly year.  One glove for each hour in the faltering day.  They would be worn, again and again, hiding ringless hands.   And time would continue as it always had, orbiting a sun that did not seem to care.

And yet… in just this instant there seemed to be a way out of Big Ben’s repetitive clacking and the 10,000 Year Clock didn’t seem like such a bad idea.  The only movement in this moment came from the flickering of stars and the challenge in her eyes.  In this present, with the universe frozen to a temperature that was livable, the Long Now almost seemed possible.

Is that a chance you are willing to take?

Thank you to http://www.flickr.com/photos/telstar/ for the photo of the 10,000 Year Clock prototype!  Hooray!

Dry Flies (Thailand. Summer 2011.)

Dry Flies

Ten eyes blink
in an unfamiliar brightness.
You both almost remember
seeing this sun before.
Some time before the darkness,
before you slept with roots and grubs,
before your premature burials,
before the prime number
of years spent waiting.

The temperature is right.
It’s your four minutes, the soil urges.
Take it. Take it.

Seventeen years this moment has
grown and molted, hid and sighed,
waited and waited to sing.

It’s not time to store for winter.
It’s time to leave empty selves behind,
clinging to bark and dust.
It’s time to shed golden skins.

Vines pause their swaying,
mangoes hold their breath,
leaf corpses don’t even rustle.
The dog day is silent.

It’s loud at first, furious and brave,
drunk with the newness of light.
It’s not a matter of legs or violins.
Bodies resound as ribs rub together.

The song becomes a whisper
as you near each other,
gentler, like a snake in the leaves.
It’s no longer for coaxing,
no longer for the eyes of the trees.

Branches are split.

Later, much later,
buttressed trees will burst with children,
nymphs will rain from their twiggy fingers,
speckled-dust life and the promise of song
will fall to a summery, shimmery floor.

But now, it’s not time to store for winter.

Creative Commons love to http://www.flickr.com/photos/pennstatelive/ for the photo of “Cicadas” etching by Marilyn McPheron.

Seasons in Prague (Prague. Fall 2006.)

Summer and Winter walked hand-in-hand away from the Old Town Square. The shock of that communion turned leaves red in the face and sent them jumping from the roofs of arboral skyscrapers. The seasons took no notice of the fallen desperation beneath their feet. Time crossed the Vltava. Summer took her clothes off and waded until the water kissed her thighs. ‘Immersion is better than bridges,’ she called to Winter, and Winter had to agree. She left a bustle of ice in her wake and followed Summer and Time across the river. They climbed the broad white vertebrae of Autumn’s back one by one, the north star dangling from Winter’s neck leading the sun in Summer’s hair. At the top, they giggled, amazed and intimidated by the jutting protrusion of Time’s Arrow. Time had already abandoned it, leaving it frozen — not standing straight, but pointed north. Past the north pole to an Alaskan future. Winter raised an eyebrow and moved towards it. Her frosty fingers stroked the Stalinist metal. ‘We need to keep changing,’ Summer called to her, and Winter had to agree. Turning around, they found themselves in a blizzard of skateboards, writhing in the air around them. The fragile pubescent testosterone and the ollie-grinding snowflakes kept the seasons moving. Winter and Summer continued. In a field below, camels and zebras grazed in a Bohemian fall, and they knew that Time had abandoned them. Summer and Winter froze and pointed north.

Creative Commons love to http://www.flickr.com/photos/pike77/ for the painting!