The Lesser Light

We moonlings do with great delight our labors for the lesser light.

We stoke the waxing, still the waning, trim the lamp of mystic flaming.

We guide the searchers in the dark and set the seasons on their mark.

We turn the times and tilt the tides, and shine the beams for shadow hides.

We watch the whirling world below and count the quickened ebb and flow.

We moonlings do with great delight our labors for the lesser light.

***

Deep inside the moon, I hurried towards the surface, the rhyme of Lunar Labors on my breath. The final fullness soon upon us, the inner moon commotioned, every moonling fervent at their task. 

The stokers worked their giant bellows, blowing shards of darkness from the shining slivered surface high above their heads. 

The stillers waited, bottles clinking, for the moment of the waning, standing ready to collect each oily drop of draining lunar light.

 The hooded forms of trimmers moved with silent urgency, bearing sacred offerings to the hallowed flaming halls.

 I stepped aboard the ancient cog while turners heaved their handles, and with cadences of creaking time, they hefted me up higher. 

The shiners blinked their nervous greetings as I passed them at their posts. Their eager shadows stretched towards me, inquiring of homes below; sheltered ridges, leeside coves, quiet stoneyards where young shades could grow. 

The silvery tongues of the midnight guides wove their magic all around me, and I envied all the searchers below whose darkness would no longer be lonely. 

At the top of the cog I stepped aside to move among the tilters. Their gauzy gowns followed fluid limbs in gleaming moondog katas that pushed against the desert space to shape the distant waters. 

At stolid desks of blackened stone the setters raised their spectacle eyes to tune their instruments of verdigris and search their charts of storming skies.

“Come,” I said to the noble counters, "follow me into the sea of vapors, follow me onto the gibbous peaks." And they came along behind me, their masked faces bowed as they bore their burden of fine polished glass.

At the top of the mountain, I, the watcher, stood, looking down through encompassing black. I beheld the blue whirling water, the restless green isles, the tendriled white swirling mists. And as the moon filled, I reached for the glass and the counters prepared for their tallies and they raised from its place in its velvet lined box the pure silver clockwork diviner.  

The palm of my hand held the ticking heart beat while my eye gulped the light through the glass, and I spoke to the counters of all I could see, and they tallied each tale that I passed.

  On the sands made radiant by the lesser light’s glow, I saw soft shelled infants at their birth in the ground. Their devourers stood close with beaks poised and certain, while the egg-born awaited the moon-compass rays.   

Beneath the salted waters I saw, in their castles of living color, the makers of islands, the growers of stone, the soft-tentacled terraformers. And each in their billions turned their synchronous thoughts up towards the pale-lighted foam, and they searched for the sign of replenishment in the glyphs of the wave-scattered beams.

I saw the un-leafed stems of the night loving plant, the low growing, budded ephedra. Its buds swelled with nectar pulled from dry, dusty soil, conserved for secretion at the time of moonshining.

And the wolf pack I saw, with its worshipful howl, their padded paws prancing the cold hunting grounds. Their songs filled the forests of frightened eyes and I heard the prey’s prayers of hiding. 

In their open temples of hard wrought stone, I saw the earthling priests. With fingers pointing at the darkened sky, they reckoned of famines and feasts. 

The youthful wandered in the dimming trees, hopeful the moonspell would bind them, hopeful the season of tenderness somehow would always find them.   

I held all their hopes with the clockwork diviner, from the heights of the selene mount. The counters chanted as the ticking slowed, and I watched all the quickened live their lives below. Then the moment came when the moon reached fulfillment, and I pressed the clockwork diviner’s silvered heart. And the counters shouted, and the setters rejoiced, and the world below drank of the cold softened light.

Then on the radiant shores below, the egg-born surged for the pulsing sea. The compass-rays shone in their glittering eyes, and the tides reached up to pull them free.

The colored castles beneath the salted sea let loose their living burdens, and the oceans coursed with larval life in swaddling nursery currents.

The un-leafed stems of the ephedra plant held their budded heads out proudly, while the nectar rose in gem-cut drops to refract the time of shining. 

For the frightened eyes on cold hunting grounds, the moonbeams deepened the shadows. The wolf pack stalked through the black and white trees, while prey huddled safe in their hides. 

The priests’ pale faces leaned upwards towards the omen and they inscribed what they saw on the stones. 

The youthful basked in the fleeting glow, their hands still warm from holding, and gave no thought for anything but the moonlit eyes before them.

 Deep below the moon’s bright surface, the stokers stopped their blowing, and the stillers filled their empty bottles with liquid waning light. 

The hooded trimmers hummed their vows of sacred gratitude, bowing their lamps to the lowering flame with pious solicitude. 

The cogs of time continued their creak, turning the moon through the sky. 

The shiners wiped their tearful eyes, in memory of shadows gone by. 

The midnight guides now spoke to me, calling me down from the peaks. 

To stolid stone desks I followed their lead, through the weary receding tilters. The setters accepted the clockwork diviner and carefully rewound the seasons.

“So,” I said to the counters, “how much did I see? Can the quickened below be numbered?”

The counters consulted the tallies they’d made, then spoke from behind their masks. “The quickened below, they ebb and flow, they ebb and flow, they ebb and flow. The creatures below, they ebb and flow and follow the lesser light.”

As I descended deeper, the inner moon commotioned, every moonling fervent at their task. The time of emptying drew near, and I hurried downward, the rhyme of Lunar Labors on my breath.

***

We moonlings do with great delight our labors for the lesser light.

We stoke the waxing, still the waning, trim the lamp of mystic flaming.

We guide the searchers in the dark and set the seasons on their mark.

We turn the times and tilt the tides, and shine the beams for shadow hides.

We watch the whirling world below and count the quickened ebb and flow.

We moonlings do with great delight our labors for the lesser light.