To the Tune of "Silk-Washing Stream" — On Learning the Moon's Scars Are Love
To the Tune of "Silk-Washing Stream" I thought her face was only worn with years— that ancient face I've seen through childhood tears, unmoving, cold, indifferent to our fears. So many marks. I never thought to ask what labor lay behind that silver mask, what weight she bore in her appointed task. You tell me now she pulled them to her breast— each rock, each stone, each cosmic wreck unblessed— and wore the wound so we could have our rest. She pulled them into her own orbit. Not away by chance. Not random. But she caught the falling fire with everything she's got. Billions of years. And every culture named her she— Chang'e who fled, Artemis running free, and Gaea's distant sister on the sea. These craters are not age. They are not flaw. I look again with something close to awe. They are the proof she stood between the raw and violent dark and all we are. They are her stretch marks. Stretch marks from the pull. The pulling into orbit. The pulling ho...
