We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

15.2.20

On Being Asked to Depict the Snow Moon


On Being Asked to Depict the Snow Moon

What a cold, mysterious moon that must be.
I imagine her: starkest white, beautifully aloof,
like Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen. 

When I was very young, living in a cold climate,
I became afraid. I feared that a shard of ice
would lodge itself in my heart and freeze me.

My beautiful, distant mother was unable
to hug a child spontaneously — or indeed
to be anything spontaneous. So you see.

Instead I kept, defiant, a secret spark in my heart,
a hidden fire to warm myself from the inside.
And eventually I escaped. Now I inhabit sunlight.

In this fertile, sub-tropical home, we don’t know cold
as they do who live where winter comes with snow.
There is no such thing, here, as a snow moon. 

I shiver at the mere thought, and will forego, 
forevermore, such terrible, heart-halting beauty.
The moon here is a warm, embracing Goddess. 

Written to serve instead of a picture for the February #witchwithme challenge on Instagram.

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