Listen Here- Author Reads - Podcast Style
The sun sees your body, the moon sees your soul.
Alphonse Mucha
Luna
An Ode:
To The Moon.
In the silvered chest of a roaring sun
manes moil wild for told.
The dark nights have their sacred tales
where hands of truth unfold.
I don’t get much to midnight anymore. Like a rooster, I am called to the light.
Learning to see in the dark. Trusting the night. Letting go. The journey of my life.
The sun. He looks for me.
The moon.
She hides from me.
I may not often make it to the witching hour. Yet this witch still comes for me. Be-Witching my dreams. I search for her as I surrender to sleep.
I search for her as I wake.
We were told that the sun may burn our eyes. Nobody warned us men about the moon. The moon melts our heArt! She turns us to salt. Our marrowed flesh and hollowed bones are left in a pile of memories that haunt the lips of a lifetime. We were always warned, to not fly too close to the sun. Ah but the moon! The moon. Chocolate and brine dipped in wine. Her madness pulls on the tides of a swell. The sweet musk of mystery.
The moon. In her mid summer silk. She enchants.
The Celts called her a Lynx Moon. Some a Lightning Moon. On this side of the great sea we call her the Sturgeon Moon. She has fins and a tail. A fish kind of moon.
This is only my “tail” to tell. Sitting around this Canadian campfire, strumming on a guitar, sipping firewater and singing soul songs into the swell. The light of the moon? Looking up at the dark sky hoping she will call on me. Just one more time.
Was she the one who got away? Or was it “I”? I smile into the song of a revelation.
La Luna. She is difficult at first to understand. She hides yet still wants to be seen? To be found? It seems. I wish I could ask her now what I didn’t ask her then. She is always changing her appearance. Sometimes fully there. Sometimes fully disappearing. Half in, half out. Waxing. Waning. Waves. Cycles. Phases. The sun just is. Even though we can’t see him we know that he still looks the same. Full. Round. Ruddy. The moon she may be pink, sometimes orange, silver, copper, gold, brunette, even blue. All the shades of black and white. All the in-betweens. More dim than bright. Sometimes we find her under the dark. Sometimes we find her on the light. Creating in the tension. She only reveals what she wants us to see. The stolen moment of a reflection never fully released - in the shadows of belief. Looking in - to the window of a mirror. Looking out - in the mirror of a window. The crescent of a thigh. A gibbous of neck. The feigning perigee of eyes.
What is waning? What is waxing?
Selene. Becoming whatever her phases call for. Never a mask. A different archetype. A different being. A lover. A huntress. A maiden. The mother. A mystic. A sage. The Queen. All the moods. All the contemplations. Always a different way of seeing. Mystery. Just when I think I know. I un-know. Just when I think I have a hold of today. Tomorrow arrives. After awhile I just let go. A crack in the vanity, to flow, with nodal shifts of tide. Ascending and descending through the waves of becoming. I settle into the I don’t know. The un-know. The unknown. I learn to surrender. No expectations. No responsibility. No postcards of possession. Not to hold. Clarity is sometimes not always possible. Not everyday. What is an image? What is an imagination? I see her in both. She finds me between both. Craving a deeper conversation.
When I do see her, I only ever see her face. What’s on her far side? Can we ever see it? Can she see it? Can she only feel it? Makes me wonder who has her back? Maybe just the stars? Maybe the whole universe? I hope so. It can be lonely up in space.
Sometimes on a clear night I can just catch a glimpse of her. I stare. I confess. As soon as I lean into the posses - of a moment. She swims away like an elusive mermaid.
I don’t even know what happened . Strangely, I only get to see the front of her as she departs. I only see her outer half? Her upper half? Her bright side? Her far side is the mystery I want to discover. Is that her inside? Her bottom half? Her dark side? Dark chocolate and sea salt. Brine. I want to taste all her wine. All her seas.
Beyond the screen lives the tales of those who were blinded looking back at her over their shoulders. Turned to salt. Melted in her madness. Melted in her Mares. Boys who never made it back the same. Men who never made it back sane. She still haunts in her full presence. She haunts in her absence. She haunts in her total disappearance.
All we can do is meet her where she is. Until she doesn’t want to be there anymore. Never the same place in the sky. She hides. In the clouds. In the storms. Yet I know she is still there. In the gestalt of lines, shapes, patterns of loss, patterns of gain. Shaping. Form. In faces of her own illumination.
Yet if - and I say if, you ever get to taste from the wine of her seas. If you ever get to know all her Marias. If you can let her just be. If you can honour her in wonder. Never to possess. Never to control. In a sacred convergence. One day on a wild witch’s night. She will baptize you. In a blinding brief eclipse. An overlap where light and shadow dance. You will meet the soul of the moon. You will taste Selene. Dark chocolate and salt of sea. Maybe you will get to meet yourself? In your own disappearance. Whatever form or shape that will take.
Poor soul, you like I, will search for her thereafter in that wander of forevers. Maybe she was also just searching for herself? Maybe she still is? In maps. In people. In reflections. In mirrors. In flowers. In greens. In streams. In dreams. In gratitude. Looking to be seen? Maybe she truly already was? Beyond all the shades of conjunct blue. Maybe the most she can ever do is throw shadows at you. Yet she's always the moon to me. Chocolate, brine and wine.
Maybe one day she will find love with a poet? A sun. If only. Only if. For a moment. A brief eclipse. Together dining on shadow seen in a shared light. Wanting to taste the feeling beyond just the seeing. Her mystery will wild. His ink will endure. Arching at altars of intimacy. Staining deeper than any images ever reach. Ever can. Can ever. Some words may just live forever. As the tingle of feelings. Burned soul deep. Even the ones she used to speak. Long after a voice and a touch is forgotten. The salt of tears. The salt of years. Stained with eyes that taste of dried lace, scented in the flower of honey, ringed in empty palms with faded lines, scarved in stories. heArt matters.
Poetry matters. More than words can ever say. Not to rescue her. Not to fix her. Not to cure her. To “cuore” her. To attempt the gesture of witness. To love her. Just the way she is. Presence. Just the way I am. Regardless of how it turns out. Even from a-far. Lifetimes apart. An expansion. Nowhere and everywhere. Everything and nothing.
An expression?
Maybe more an “allusion”? If there is no shared meaning, we can only allude. We can only try to imagine. Maybe meaning is not important? What is important is to be loyal to the dream and not to the circumstances. A Soular Eclipse.
Mad moon of chocolate, brine and wine.
Bittersweet edges of raw divine. Luna.
Welcome to August. I’ve been looking forward to talking with you. Again.
Sweet moon. One day. Soon?
I will leave my laughter in a tin can by the window just in case you come by.
Salt
The pink lips of presence
smile from an inward face.
Lunar wetness kisses
this firm sol of terrestrial being.
The want of feeling
beyond what we are seeing.
In the unseen depths of the shadows
the ocean longs for the land.
The wind calls for fire.
Imagination.
The Moon.
In the surging waves of change
she pulls on the tides of a swell.
Madness musks of her mystery.
The bitterness of wisdom.
The sweetness of authenticity.
Chocolate and wine.
Essence and action.
The brine of intention.
The truth of transformation.
The flesh of light communions
into the resonance of soul.
In the firm grip of darkness
salt knows the taste
of home.
© Jamie Millard
Thanks for leaning into this August Full Moon with me! I am playing with a new way of storytelling as I live into the questions. The questions our spiritual journey persists in asking. The darkness of a new moon seems to challenge my own darkness and the clarity of a full moon feels more inviting into the light of gratitude. In her haecceity and quiddity.
Thank you for Being- Here. This Cuore-Odyssey where we ask words to bring meaning to life as language. The paradox in the end is that words fail us as we try to perform an act that words cannot describe. Life. Living. Feeling. Being. Loving. Poetry does not belong to language. Poetry tries to enter into language. Canadian poet and linguist Robert Bringhurst says, “The failure of language is what allows poetry to exist”.
We are just trying to get to the other side of language.
Does anybody know a good translator?
Have the best of days. Stay well. Safe travels.
Lots of Love,
Jamie
Author Read Voice found at top under main heading.
Jamie, I don't feel I belong in the comments section of your always astonishingly beautiful writing, because I am usually left without words after reading your words. I don't know what to say. But that is testament to the power of your writing. So. If all I leave is a heart, please know it is a most heart-felt one.
Jamie, this is ab-soul-utely exquisite … a lunar symphony! For every word, every line of your ode doesn’t just speak to Mother Moon, but listens deeply for Her in the silence between tides. Wow! You’ve woven myth, memory, longing and deep revelation into a tapestry that shimmers with salt and shadow, dark chocolate and wine! This isn’t just storytelling and poetry, it’s devotion. A soul’s offering.
And I love, love, love how your Luna isn’t just a distant celestial body but a living archetype Here, a mirror, a muse, a mystery. She’s felt deeply in the marrow, tasted in the brine, glimpsed in the fleeting curves of disappearing reflections. And you, dear poet, are Her witness. Her scribe. Her lover. Her companion in the dark.
Also thanks so much for reminding us that to love Mother Moon is to accept Her phases, Her absences, Her presence, Her wildness. Her whole fluid, cyclical, elusive nature. That to know Her is never to possess Her, but to meet Her only in the moment … however brief, however elusive.
Through my archetypal lens, I note that Luna becomes the living symbol of the unconscious with Her phases echoing our own inner tides, Her absences reminding us of the fertile void where, again, our own transformation begins. I love how she shimmers as Anima, how She dwells in the inner world. She who guides us through our dreams, our longings and into the sacred unknown.
Honestly, your ode feels like a dialogue with Her, a courtship with the soul’s own reflection! I'm so impressed! And I’m going to return again and again, for one cannot digest such richness in one sitting alone. Believe me when I say: I’m wholly inspired!
Ah, so you’ve left your laughter in a tin can by the window. She’ll come by. She always does … for those who know how to wait with wonder. With love and soul-ar reverence from one deeply moon-touched poet to another. Full moon blessings. 🙏❤✨