Day 842: The Moon Addresses Her Reflection

I'm feeling in a moon mood recently. Hard not to when there's a beautiful moon hanging in the sky right now! Here's another lovely musing on it from magical wordsmith Ali Smith.



The Moon Addresses Her Reflection - Alice Oswald

In this floating world, in this floating world,
you are a kind of nothingness and far less fine than a tiger
and I inhabit one of the jagged disassembled islands.

If you so wish, you can find me
up a high rock in the wind,
discreet of foot, claws in a glove, just
rubbing my yew-burr knees.

I have a moon's task - staring at seas.

Women and men, like dolphins,
fluke and sound, pushing their lives above the waves.

But you and I, who know each other's nothingness,
are lonely, like the blues beyond 
(the sea-ghost turning its mirrors under the sky-ghost).

And with huge care, closer and closer,
if we so wish we could
deliberately condense our lightness
into the weights and disciplines of love.

Or you can leave me,
powerful on my rock
and as you go, reduce me to a moon.