Half Moon by Day

Half Moon by Day

Today was the last cool day of the season. I worked through it. Enjoying the unnecessary air-conditioning and seeing only the dull gray of stockroom walls. Outside the sky was blue and spotless, almost sharp and crispy like a freshly iron cloth or a flat piece of stainless steel. The trees were dancing, flourishing their growing green leaves in the afternoon sunlight. The water on the lake was silent, but allowed itself to be subjected to the ripples formed by a gentle breeze, blowing beneath the footbridge where I saw a young man and woman watching the world go by. I passed them on my bike, briefly, and kept going.

At the far end of the lake, on the grassy banks, a family of geese, two parents and four goslings, waddled to and fro, breaking from their day of swimming. The gosling’s damp, yellow feathers were already turning gray and black with the onset of the summer months.

Up above, in that blue sky, opposite the sun was the moon, a half moon, a perfectly straight edge of rock that moved around our planet. It was silver, and from its positioning I saw that it wouldn’t be half for too much longer. Soon, as if in unison with the summer heat, it would be full, a blazing sphere of white bubbling in the sky, making even the nights unbearable and stuffy.

I wish the moon would always be half, just as I wish the season would always be spring, that midpoint between winter and summer. That way the days would be cool and bearable. If I were able, I would have ridden my bike up into the sky and followed that half moon and all of spring around the world, throughout the year, for the rest of my days.