Poetry, Photography, Nature

One Night

A full moon poem

One night, when the ink ran black across the sky, my soul slipped free from all that I knew as me.

Mortal words echoed in my ears, and shimmers of light, tiny pin-pricks — portals to another world — burst free and then died in the ether.

An owl cried.

Her shadow crawled across the moon, and I knew that, soon, Ratri would toss her cloak upon the orange hills.

The old lady turned her cratered cheek away, as if to say that she knew she was already dying.

• Ratri — the Indian Goddess of the Night. She is mentioned in the ṛg vēda (1500–1000 BCE) but she may have originated much earlier than that.

I’ve been chasing the moon all month, it seems. While on my recent trip to Oregon, I paid close attention to the new moon growing from a tiny silvered crescent into a cuticle over the course of a few days — because I was attempting to do some astrophotography and I needed the sky to be dark in order to capture the light of the stars.

Since I’ve been back, I’ve been watching her each evening while I’ve been out on my mountain bike rides in the late afternoons. She creeps up above those golden hills and hangs there, like a pearl pendant catching the glow of candlelight.

Two nights ago, I rode into the moonrise just as the cratered old lady climbed above a stand of Eucalyptus trees. I tried to capture the moment with my iPhone, but I think the memory is far prettier than the image turned out to be, so I deleted all the photos.

Last night though, I tucked my Nikon into my camelback (hoping I would not crash and kill my precious camera) and rode out in search of the moon again, because I knew she had almost reached perfect fullness.

But, alas, the best things in life always seem to happen when you don’t plan them. I was not able to even catch a glimpse of the great mother of the sky because a layer of puffy clouds had amassed at the horizon. I guess it was a memory only meant to be seen in my mind’s eye.

To hear this poem, read by the author, click here: Cratered Lady.

Erika Burkhalter is a yogi, neurophilosopher, cat-mom, photographer, and lover of travel and nature, spreading her love and amazement for Mother Earth’s glories, one photo, poem or story at a time. (MS Neuropsychology, MA Yoga Studies).

I hope you enjoyed my photo, poem and musings.

A few years ago, I wrote another poem on Sharad Purnima — the Indian harvest festival celebrated on evening of the full moon in October:

You might have noticed that this piece is published in my new pub, “Butterfly Dreams,” which I created to showcase some of my photos, poems and musings. If you’d like to see more pieces like this, you can “follow” the publication.

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Photos and story ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.