The moon moves into my awareness discreetly. Seen most easily at night in its quiet reshaping, it catches my attention in the way of a love seen often, or of a friend unseen for years—almost a feeling of awe—and when words come, they too come easily:
In a puddle
Under a dripping shirt
The moon
“The capacity to engage life symbolically is what makes our culture possible and our spiritual life necessary. Symbols help bridge us to the mysteries of the cosmos, to natural events, to each other, and to our own mysterious selves. Mysteries are not knowable directly. . . . Symbol and metaphor are our greatest gifts, for they make culture and spirituality possible.”*
Literally, moon dust generally connotes even finer materials than lunar soil.
“Prema’s leaving her moon dust all over the bathroom counter” found my ears during my spring travels in America.
Rather than going to see what I’d left behind that caused said dust, I paused, for my mind was reeling with moon dust . . . words floating unanchored and lyrical. Over the next few seconds I traveled through years of poetry without a memory appearing. When I returned to the practicality of a trip to the bathroom, I discovered baking soda left from tooth brushing.
“The symbol points beyond itself toward a larger realm of mystery.”*
I had smiled on finding the evidence, because in this instance, I had discovered something more meaningful to me than my behavior and my lack of organization. I had heard a youth’s words as poetry.
My realization is, “There may be more than one meaning in communication. To be spiritual opens us to find that other relevance first, even if it is not the final message.”
* James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up (New York: Penguin Random House, 2005), 187.
* Hollis, Finding Meaning, 170.