–can you see the yellow moon setting at 6AM this morning?

They say “bathed in moonlight.”

I woke this morning, after three weeks in seven different strange rooms, in my own bed. The full moon coursed in the wall of windows and reflected back in a cleansing baptism of silver light. Although it was only 5Am, I was rested (it is two hours later where I woke the day before). I stayed in my warm bed, though, and prayerfully considered my life and work and loves, and I was happy. I turned over my paltry troubles and knew they were all manageable.

I thought of the line from Pat Conroy’s novel The Prince of Tides about the moon and sun meeting in silent opposition and concordance* and decided to wait for the moment they would collide.

I drifted into a dream of my brother (I don’t have a brother) wrapped in a well-inked body cast like a chrysalis, only his face revealed. He was wheeled in to an elevator alone. As the car rose floor after floor, it became lighter and the plaster loosened while light streamed in.

Greg rose at 5:45 for work, and I told I was waiting for the sun to meet the moon. One thing I love about this man is he doesn’t think I’m crazy for saying something like that. He kept the lights off and I watched. The moonlight was coming from the west, and at some point it would have to shift to sunlight from the east. Instead, at about 6, the light seemed to come from the center, and then the eastern side of the sycamore was brighter than the west.

A falcon flew into the tree right where I was looking so (alright, already!) I got up and was surprised to see the moon lingering on the horizon. Can you see it in the photo?

The night before the moon was almost full, rising through palm trees on a balmy night on a beach in Mexico, but we left the beach to sleep in a hotel room with flat windows and a spindly banister overlooking all-night lights of a highrise on either side. I love sun, sand, and the warm ocean in winter, but the contrast highlights our stark winter beauty.

*At the opposite end of the day on the opposite side of the country, Jimmy Buffet quotes his friend Pat Conroy from the wonderful novel The Prince of Tides in the song of the same name:

“The sun, red and enormous, began to sink into the western sky. And simultaneously the moon began to rise on the other side of the river with its own glorious shade of red, coming up out of the trees like a russet firebird. The sun and the moon seem to acknowledge each other and they moved in both *apposition and concordance in a breath taking dance of light across the oaks and the palms.”

(I imagine Conroy wrote “opposition and concordance,” but I don’t find it quickly in the text)
http://www.songlyrics.com/jimmy-buffett/prince-of-tides-lyrics/