John was just leaving to meet a delivery from the first ferry from Saltery Bay at the bottom of our driveway and he called to me, There’s a beautiful little moon you should see. A tiny wine glass, tipped on its side. I thought of Du Fu (in David Hinton’s beautiful translation):
A sliver of moon lulls through clear night.
Half abandoned to sleep, lampwicks char.Deer wander, uneasy among howling peaks,
and forests of falling leaves startle cicadas.
It was early enough for me to return to my pillow before my swim, half an hour later this morning because the thermometer read 8°. When we went down to the lake, the surface was mist, the sun not yet over the mountain, and that moon had travelled west. In the water I almost forgot it was cold. Almost.
Here,
at the edge of heaven, I inhabit my absence.
Everywhere in our house there are stacks of books the grandchildren brought out to read themselves or for me to read to them. On my bedside table, The Seven Silly Eaters, The Elephant’s Child, Over In the Meadow, Twice Mice, and our old favourite, When I Was Young in the Mountains. I am growing old beneath our mountain where the moon appeared this morning like an apprehension of autumn, nearly 70 in a house filled with books and a fire burning and the lamps ready. Yesterday a bear broke the volunteer apple tree by the sliding doors, the one I thought of as a miracle, growing in rock, blossoming against all the odds. I could hear the traffic off the first ferry, my husband waiting for the delivery, and the cat curled up against me. This spring and summer I briefly forgot I lived at the edge of heaven.
...Theresa Kishkan 