I’m grateful for all 745 full moons that I may or may not have noticed in my life thus far. Certainly over the past thirty-few years I have paid a lot more attention to the moon than I ever did during the previous decades when I lived in cities or suburbs. Since I’ve been living in rural America, I’ve been blessed to be tied to the rhythm of lunar cycles. My internal tides flow with the moon’s, rising and extending energy during waxing and full moons, settling and drawing in during waning and new moons. Or so it seems to me. And as Joan Didion famously said, “As a writer, it doesn’t matter how it was – what matters is how it was to me.” I think that’s how most of us feel. What matters is how it was to me.

I sing with the moons, I create with moons, I dance with moons. I used to bleed with the moons (I’m grateful I’m done with that! Fat lot of good it ever did me). I plant with the moons: I plant root crops after the full moon, when energy is pulled downward into the earth; and leaf crops after the new moon, when energy is pulled upward. I walk outside at night in the full moon without a flashlight, with only a dog and his extra senses to guide me through shadows. I’m grateful to live in awareness of the moon as a tidal force, a light source, a constant companion through 745 months of living. Seven hundred and forty-five… that’s not all that many… how many more full moons will I live to see, I wonder. Death is certain, time of death uncertain. Everything changes all the time, just like the moon.