The Moon in Your Hands by H. D. & Night Memory

THE MOON IN YOUR HANDS
By H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

If you take the moon in your hands 
and turn it round 
(heavy, slightly tarnished platter), 
you're there;

if you pull dry seaweed from the sand 
and turn it round 
and wonder at the underside's bright amber, 
your eyes 

look out as they did here 
(you don't remember) 
when my soul turned round, 
perceiving the other side of everything, 
mullein leaf, dogwood leaf, moth wing 
and dandelion seed under the ground.

~×~×~×~×~

Once, I rode with my husband when he threw a Sunday newspaper route from his red Jeep Wrangler.  We took off at 1:00 a.m. after loading the papers at the newspaper loading dock.  The back of the Jeep was crammed with stacks of newspapers that I folded, put into waterproof bags and handed off to him to toss precisely into the yards...in the dark.  Most did not have boxes for the papers below their mail boxes.  

The stench of the ink was nauseating.  It rubbed off onto my hands.  There was no traffic in the rural neighborhoods and he turned, whirled and drove on both sides of the road, waving at the local police who knew him.  I got carsick for the first and only time in my life, puking out the window from time to time.  It was hilarious, really.  

I said all that to say this:  I experienced the nighttime as never before or since.  The headlights illuminated the undersides of leaves as the wind blew and we swooshed by: silver, opalescent, lunar, luminous, iridescent and glowing.  I was mesmerized, enchanted.  To this day, I remember  this rare experiencing of the other side of night, as if night opened herself to me and winked, raising her skirt and letting me see her frilly, delicate crinolines.  This poem by H. D. always brings back this sweet memory.  

Stay cool!

xo,
Marion

~×~×~×~×~

"No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories."  ~Haruki Murakami