The full moon blasted me awake in the middle of last night, jangling many chords of memory: poems, sights, stories involving moonlight. Dylan Thomas' poem was one, where he says he writes "When only the moon rages ... for the lovers, their arms/ Round the griefs of the ages," and another of my favorites "For G." by Wilfrid Gibson begins "All night under the moon/ Plovers are flying".
It was Thomas who expressed what I felt so well in his lovely
In My Craft or Sullen Art
In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Not for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft of sullen art.
On "these spindrift pages," indeed.
I remembered how in moonlight the white sand along Florida highways looks like drifted snow (to one raised in a temperate climate). Then, because of the season, I thought how the sands around Bethlehem would have resembled snowdrifts in the moonlight as Mary and Joseph approached (and Mary, nine months pregnant riding on a mule--ouch!). My notion of Bethlehem-in-the-desert comes from my introduction to Christmas in the Sand Table Class at church, where endless Bible stories were played out in the raised sandbox. I felt the weight of the ages, and all the griefs this time of the year sums up for me, deaths of beloveds and beloved relationships.
The last months of the calendar always have been sad for me, and now it begins with September, remembering 9/11/2001. One of my personal losses was my mother's partner of decades. I once heard myself telling someone that he'd died "two years ago."
"Five years ago!" my mother snapped to correct me. Recalling that interchange, I realized that the griefs of all my ages became crystallized and condensed into the 9/11 terror, and that is why I haven't been able to write about it until the moon struck me last night.
