Passage

I look to the moon tonight, full and white, eye in the dark sky and think not of its waxing and waning, not of its full glowing body. Not of the tides or the distance, nor of any romantic lunar notions.

I think not of the usual moon things. Instead, tonight, I think,

How many do I get? How many more, how many in the ledger for me, past and future, how many total?

Tick tock go the days, up and down, slow steady wheel of time.

The eye opens and closes, ever constant, ever inconstant, on the same heartbeat schedule as I toil and scurry. As I wake and sleep, rise and fall, crow and weep. Round and round it goes like a clock, like a heart, forever.

Through the snows and the cicadas. Through the buds and the berries and the dry leaves that blow like lost memories across the road. Through the rising and the falling, the beginnings and the ends.

The same moon that watched my grandmothers and their grandmothers and those before them back into lost history watches me while I rarely attend, too infrequently visit. The cool marble stare of forever.

How many more while I do not watch, do not notice or mark or count?

One will be my last. One future moon, at some untold stage of its swelling and shrinking, will signal my end, will be my cue to take a bow and say goodnight. And I will likely not know, will likely be reading something or trimming my nails, cracking eggs or picking beans — head bent to some tiny task, focused on the small weary details of myself while the eye in the sky shines for me one last time.

I’d like a warning. The ticking down of a timer, a ‘places everyone!’ call to attention. A crepuscular sign, perhaps, telling me to gather whatever meaning is left and look up. I’d like to face that eye pacing the heavens and tip my hat, if I have one, or dip my chin in acknowledgement.

Thanks for your constant attendance in the absence of mine. Thanks for pacing faithfully, tracing the arc of time. Thanks for bearing witness to the wailing and the failing, the striving and the ecstasies. The pulsing inanity of it all.

Thanks for the humbling reminder that I am but a speck in the eye that sees, that my passing parade is just that.

Passing.