I was the first one to arrive, so I got to be the first to leave. Who has a party on a Monday night? The evening was cold and clear and so bright. Home, I Googled it right away. Full Cold Moon. Of course! But I only write about them once a year and it is getting harder to remember.
I am tired as I often am nights now. I don't want to be. I think I shall never have a girl if I am tired. It is the time of year when I think of one in particular. She was a baby when we met and love was too complicated. But I never seem to get over it. She is. . . what. . . thirty-three now, I think. When I stepped out of the car, I heard an owl's cry. Christmas lights and a full moon and an owl and all the old longing for her came rushing back again. I guess I was thinking of her earlier in the evening. I was in a part of town I never go, and I had driven near where she lived then with her mother. Oh, Jesus, could I love. I was the world's best lover then. And tonight I want it all back. I want to feel that in my heart and in my arms. Maybe she will visit her mother, and maybe I shall run into her. Perhaps she'll call.
I shouldn't think that way and won't let myself do it again. But stepping out of the car tonight into the sweet night's air lit by a Full Cold Moon and serenaded by an owl. . . . But the moon is far away tonight, the smallest moon of the year reaching its apex as distant as it can get. A cold, distant moon on a crisp night and an old, romantic's heart.
Queen Mab shall visit me tonight.

https://archive.org/stream/queenmabphilosop00shel#page/n15/mode/2up
ReplyDeleteAnd this for you as well:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/12/17/best-photography-books-2013/
Cold Moon indeed! It is -3 degrees here.