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.