Moonlight stills the wind, stills the plants and stills our hearts. It slinks and plays and flows over silhouetted parts of the garden and the yard exposing it in a black and white photograph tableau. Spiders held firm in its gaze, possums are blinded in the haze of milky chocolate light that bathes the house and porch. It tastes so sweet, sweet as a milky bar. Breathe in the stillness of the life that has been vacuumed out of the land at 3 in the morning, before the day begins, the place between things.
Moonlight runs like quicksilver, it is mercury over everything gobbling, consuming, absorbing. On frozen winter mornings grasses sizzle and dazzle and speckle and twinkle in it. The grass crunches underfoot on walks to the car with bottles of water to free trapped ice on the screen, ice that’s been over seen by the winking moon that commands the wind and the dew. When I reach up to touch it, it’s as if my hands are wading through delicate rose petals, white roses, grey roses, silvery spindly flying broomstick skeleton figures are held in the palm of my hand in the pincers of my fingertips.
The air is clearer and smells of nothing, it’s silent, clear as vodka, cannot smell it on your breath. You cannot smell moonlight on the breath of the wind, only it’s effect, only it’s holding the breath of the world in a pause while it arcs overhead toward the birth of another day.
