The moooooooooooon

Alicia has this neat widget on her blog — a little picture of the moon’s current phase. (At this writing it is waxing gibbous.)
I thought of it last night. We were out running errands and it was getting dark. Hambet usually isn’t out that late, and when he caught sight of the moon he grew very excited: “Look! It’s the moooooooon!”
So all that evening we were watching the moooooooon. He was quite delighted when he saw that it was following us, so we talked about that and about how the moooon is very far away. He wanted to know what the moooon is made of — I told him “rocks” and Daddy told him “cheese.” Hambet admonished him: “No, Daddy, the moon is made of ROCKS.” He grew very upset when we turned north and he couldn’t see the moon any more — “I have to look at the moon! Where is the moon?! I have to look at the moon!” — and was just as delighted when we turned south again and he could see it out the window. When we got back home he hopped out of the car and ran out into the driveway so he could stand, stock still, his little face pointed at the sky so he could gaze at the moooooon a little longer.
And it had been a while since I’d taken a good look at the mooooon. How crisp and sharp and chalky-white she looked! Even the horrible light pollution couldn’t totally obscure the outlines and shadows of her craters.
And I found myself remembering some lines of a poem — by Sylvia Plath, of all people. I’m not big on Sylvia, but a few lines from this particular poem had stuck with me, and they came back as I looked up:
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
“Her hood of bone.” I just like that metaphor. The rest of the poem (“Edge”) doesn’t interest me too much — I don’t have much patience for obscure and morbid — but it’s posted in the Extended Entry if you want to read it.

Edge
Sylvia Plath
The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.