Half-Light

by Rayna Brown

We have a constant companion
in the watchful eye of the moon.
Its nightly vigil somewhere over one shoulder
its white eye ever shimmering
speckled with grey,
age spots, the wear and tear of centuries
of eons beyond the stars, among them.
The heavens covered in a liquid amorphous darkness.
Blue becomes black when night slides in.
The heavens become the depths.
 
The air is crisper at night
cleaner, heavier,
easier to swallow,
to gulp down, greedily like water
bottomless, infinite.
A thirst hopelessly unquenched.
 
The sun can be oppressive
Demanding its love from us, demanding we feel
its warm caress.
Hot fingers brushing exposed skin,
the holes in cloth,
the spaces between each eyelash.
The blue skies are at once mocking in their defiant beauty
but become melancholy when expressed in shades of grey.
Our mood expressed in colors, gaudy splashes in the skies.
 
But night asks nothing of us but our attendance.
Unchanging in its expanse of darkness
one night blends into the next.
The moon dances in shapes
waxes, wanes, drops a few pounds,
gains a few more, winks through the trees
eats the clouds, shines through them.
The sun lets the clouds share glory in the dawn
it struggles to be seen through
the blunt white pillows.
But the moon refuses to change its trajectory,
to be covered by anything inferior
to spare us its untamed whiteness.
 
It illumines our varied paths
and beckons us to enjoy
and to realize its familiarity
a beautiful reminder of time,
forever, eternity, mortality,
of the world spinning
forever with or without us.