Monday Musings: Moon Returns As A Muse 🌙

My plan today was to share the August Skygazing Report, but I’ve changed my mind! There is no order without chaos!

However, fear not, I am less erratic than you might think, and I’m simply going to start publishing the monthly skygazing pieces in their own space rather than absorbing them into The Monday Muse. You can expect the August calendar to land in your inbox by Friday.

With that, welcome to a new week.

Today I’m sharing a short piece by Hal Borland, which was originally published on July 20th, 1969. It is the selected work for July 28th in his wonderful almanac style collection Twelve Moons Of The Year, which was released posthumously in 1979. It’s a delightful book. At times a bit outdated, but, other times, unbelievably timeless & essential.

I smiled with surprise as I began reading this piece. I never know what to expect with Hal’s writing. Some pieces are strictly about bugs, others mention birds, some are about plants, and yes, sometimes, the Moon is a muse!

Read, breathe, and see what happens next . . .

Queen of the Night, by Hal Borland

No matter what they bring back from the moon, the men who arrive there today will not alter the moonlight that has fascinated man and warmed his dreams since he first took shelter in a cave. It is still Queen of the Night, out there in the darkness. It is still the goddess that a dozen civilizations have named to their pantheons - Diana, Phoebe, Cynthia, Artemis, Hecate, Selene, Luna, Astarte. No rocket or module or chemical formula or equation can destroy it.

There it is, a gleaming, golden crescent in the western sky; then through its phase of waxing till it rises in the east at sundown, a great coppery disk that becomes the silvery full-moon sentinel of the whole night; then waning, a wasted half-moon high in the sky at dawn, a last-quarter crescent low in the east, and gone again in that dark phase which ends with a new moon in the west again.

Long before he calculated the earth’s seasonal relationship to the sun, man based his calendar on the moon’s predictable phases. We still recognize the Harvest Moon and the Hunter’s Moon. For generations, farmers and gardeners planted and reaped by the moon’s phases, believing that it influenced growth and yield. Now we know that the moon is responsible not only for the ocean’s tides but for an earth tide that also ebbs and flows.

June moon, October moon, January moon, March moon - moon of visions and poems, of love and dreams, of tides and the throbbing pulse - still in its orbit, unchanged through the eons, predictable as today’s sunset.

Share

I also want to encourage you to meet the moon this week! She is waxing, and at the time that I am typing this, she has just passed the planet Mars. I’m hoping to get a few pictures after sunset - prime viewing time!

Watch the Moon transform from that gleaming, glowing crescent to a half full disk between tonight & Friday evening. Let a sense of amazement wash over you.

Let it be a reminder to reconnect with the natural cycles around you & within you.