Rambling through Moonshadows

Slowly silently,now the moon,

Walks the night in her silver shoon 

Walter de la Mare

One of the simple pleasures of life is sitting in a hot tub bathed in moonlight  under a canopy of skeleton trees with stars twinkling up above.  No wonder so many great songs and poems have been written about the moon.

When you look up at the moon, what do you see? What do you think?

As I am a lady of a certain age I still look for the man in the moon; For the younger set out there who haven’t done this if you squint your eyes you can just make out his face..

       

In China , the man has a name , Wu Kang. He is known as the God of love and marriage and what does he do? he ties the feet of lovers together with an invisible chord. Now that was news to me and maybe why so many great love songs are written about the moon. It  makes the chord stronger. Just ramble through some for a while…. “Moon River”, “Moonlight becomes you”, ‘Fly me to the moon”, “Blue moon”.

One of my favorites is “Moon Shadow” the song by Cat Stevens ….“ I’m being followed by a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow”  and for a short time I was. Moonshadow was a darling little kitten that followed me everywhere. He was a little dappled gray tabby that danced in and out of the moon rays and like all kittens was a mischievous soul. I missed him when he passed on.

Might as well make a wish while you look at the moon. It’s also believed that if you do that on the evening of your birthday, you can see if the wish will be fulfilled  A crescent moon with its tips pointing up means your wish won’t come true . But if the tips point down, your wish will come true. A full moon signifies a year of good luck.

The moon has always been a thing of mystery and beauty .The Algonquins called each moon by a different name; January was the wolf moon. Can’t you just picture the wolves slinking through the snow over the mountain passes lit by the moonbeams and shadows. The native peoples have such a great way of seeing life.

Now what is the moon made of? Green cheese. Fortunately the smell of it doesn’t come through the atmosphere. It would probably be stronger than carbon gases and we don’t want anything more to worry about or to add to global warming.

Unfortunately the moon as a place of great mystery changed somewhat after a remarkable event that happened in the 60s. Do you remember it? It’s one of those events that is sealed for ever in your memory if you were alive then.  Seeing JFK on the television the other night I remembered he was the President that fired us up to get to the moon to see if it really was made of green cheese. Now when we look up at the beautiful orb in the sky we have a better idea of what it really is. Although I prefer the green cheese theory .

 That event certainly brought moon madness to the fore. Remember moon boots!. My boys had them and I still think of them clunking about in the enormous oversize boots instead of sandals. They must have been really comfortable.

I read  there is an effort underway to return to the moon . Maybe to test for sure the green cheese theory or to see if this time they can find Wu Kang.