Today I held in my outstretched palm
a smooth, flat piece of moon stone,
black, ordinary, impenetrable,
nor containing even the smallest
fragment of mystery or light.
Nothing asking to be named or known,
merely a door opening into further darkness.
When my daughter was very small
she would exclaim in joyous wonder
from the balcony, "The moon! The moon!,"
greeting her nightly friend once again.
But this, this cannot be the moon,
I think. This is mere flint, shale, asphalt,
chimney soot swept and hardened
to a coin of no value here below.
No miner would bother to claim it.
But a child can easily see light where
our eyes cannot, can spark a new
world from nearly anything within reach.
We add our stone to the fish bowl
full of earthly ones, our own small piece
of moon, which we read has traveled
hundreds of thousands of miles
to be right here beside us, where we rest
and dream another day into waking.
