full moon at midnight

You think it would mean something, the moon being full, the hour being midnight. You think it would mean something that it is a Friday night, that it was the first of a long stretch of a three day weekend. Full moon at midnight, a beacon to all manner of excess, a search light for all sorts of lonesome. It only ends up another night, another light in the sky, an extra set of shadows. The sounds of distant laughter, the rattle of brown glass.

The next day billows forth, bright and warm and fresh, a spring wind filling the sails of summer. It speaks of comfort and continuity, a that things that always change will always be the same. That local hummingbird, the mischievous scrub jay and those raucous crows. The green grapes a ripened green, wallowing vainly on the vine. A few more peaches loosed by the wind, asleep in the crumbling dirt. Awake to all these off-hand pleasure, teeth gritted in second-hand pain.

Thelonious Monk now, alone with a piano. That staggered stride, the bending of the melody in his exaggerated, rickety way, that calm and witty sort of swing he caresses from the keys. Old music recorded and re-recorded, an echo of an echo's echo, the electronic fingerprints of the radiance of the human soul. It must mean something, that this much feeling endures. It must mean something that a reflection of lost light can shine, broken into scant vibrations, lit behind shut eyes. That the long shadows of dawn turn themselves inside out at dusk, always reaching towards something that isn't yet or once was. That even this moment right now, having been witnessed, has dissolved into sense and memory. Resonance and sweetness, the smudged glass, the curling smoke of habit. That feeling that will endure long after the flesh has fled us.