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Who left the moon on last night? In the night, I woke up wondering who was shining a light through my window so late. A few hours earlier – around midnight – it was the flashing lights and sirens of police cars, ambulances and fire trucks. Brooklyn, Friday night. I pulled back the curtains and saw the moon, clear and constant. The moonlight’s path came through the sky, through the wild mulberry tree behind the house, through the iron bars that gate the windows, through the window pane and the sheer curtains. It was a cool beautiful light.

In New York the moon will be full in a few days. It’s named waxing gibbous, meaning that it looks like a hunchback and is getting bigger. Not so romantic. Pulling back the curtains and letting the moonlight flood the room, I have to think of the moon as something wonderful.

The nearly-full moon – which is what I would rather call it – is both beautiful and full of promise. The full moon is coming if the sky stays clear. And the light reminds me that I’m living on the thin surface of slowly spinning planet, turned away from the sun for the night. The moon follows earth along her path as a cyclic reminder of the light we long for who’s energy keeps all living things alive in one form or another. She’s not a hunchback but a goddess. Before falling back asleep I envisioned two new stories and went through the story of a new play I’m working on – without writing down a word. Yes, the moon is an inspiration. She is welcome company in the magical place between dreaming and waking where the stories live.

With all the news on environmental dangers of our time, all the warnings of 2012 apocalypse, a calm stream of moonlight over the city in the silent wee hours of the morning is like a vision from another, more beautiful world. But wait, whose world is this? It’s our world. Our beautiful world.

So to who ever left the moon on last night, thank you.

Moon photo credit: NASA at http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/104948main_image_feature_246_ajhfull.jpg

Pantheon photo credit: J.J.Brown