Religion Of The Moon

There are some things that you just know about yourself, know in the bone.

One of the things that I know about myself is that I will always, no matter what else, come what may, chance what might, I will always be a complete sucker for good poetry. Is it my Sun in Pisces, my Ascendent Gemini, the placement of Neptune in my chart? I don't know, but I do know that when I am coughing my death rattle, I will still be in ecstatic love with good poetry.

Here's some:

Remember the moon? Remember the night when you were fifteen and you crept out of your house at night when you were supposed to be asleep, to see the moon? And it was so bright you could barely believe it was real, and the glare from its shining made an enormous cross in the night sky, and the grass was a dangerous carpet of silver blades, and the trees all had sweet dark secrets they told you, carried to you on the wind that touched your bare arms, cold as butter? You saw it then for a minute – the great map of the planet and all the stars and whirlpools in the black honey of space spread out before you, and you stood as though you had been driven feet first and planted in the earth, knowing this would be your religion, forever. Well, somewhere inside you there is a story and a dance for that moon and that night and they are waiting for you to give them breath and body. Because the more you dance the moon, the less you will forget Her in the face of terror, clocks[,] and currency. Birds covered in oil. O Religion! Bind me to the moon. Bind me to unforgetting, and in that binding[,] the unfettered freedom of Knowing how to continue, and going about the Work with holy resolve.

OK, it purports to be prose, and, wracked, I'd admit that it's prose, but it's very poetic prose, isn't it?

If we can just read enough poetry to "go about the Work with holy resolve," we can all die happy, I think. I can, at least. Can you? What does it take for you?

Picture found here.