“Look at the stars!  Look, look up at the skies!/ O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!/ The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!”

– Gerard Manley Hopkins

Last night the Buck Moon — the full moon of July — made her way through the cloud cover and showed her face for all to see.  She crept above the horizon in the southeast just as the sky began to lose its daytime color, sharing her world for a while with the setting sun.  Rolling black clouds were silhouetted in the southwest against a sky the color of dying embers as the day burned long.  As the sun’s final light disappeared in the night, the Buck moon rose to capture his rays and send them, reflected, into the world where dreams are born.

She draws me into her world, just as she invited Hopkins to join her on a night in centuries past.  I watch the Mother Moon shine in the world of her children, the stars, bringing peaceful light to the world below as she holds her mirror and reflects the Light into a land shrouded in darkness.  I bid her goodnight and call out to the stars that lie hidden by clouds in the moonlit sky.  ”Even when I don’t see you, I know you are there,” I tell them, and I carry that reassurance with me as I close my eyes and let my dreams take me to the land of the stars.  Good night, Moon.  I will see you in my dreams.