The primitive part of my heart fears that the time of darkness will stay. The modern part of my brain accepts that just because she is cloaked in darkness does not mean that she is gone, never to return.
My brain knows that she will grow again from syckle splinter to full. My heart enjoys the skies painted thick with stars.
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I rather like Mary Stewart's reason for a safe dark night
ReplyDelete"Sometimes, when you're deep in the countryside, you meet three girls, walking along the hill tracks in the dusk, spinning. They each have a spindle, and on to these they are spinning their wool, milk-white, like the moonlight. In fact, it is the moonlight, the moon itself, which is why they don't carry a distaff. They're not Fates, or anything terrible; they don't affect the lives of men; all they have to do is to see that the world gets its hours of darkness, and they do this by spinning the moon down out of the sky. Night after night, you can see the moon getting less and less, the ball of light waning, while it grown on the spindles of the maidens. Then, at length, the moon is gone, and the world has darkness, and rest.....
...on the darkest night, the maidens take their spindles down to the sea, to wash their wool. And the wool slips from the spindles into the water, and unravels in long ripples of light from the shore to the horizon, and there is the moon again, rising above the sea....Only when all the wool is washed, and wound again into a white ball in the sky, can the moon-spinners start their work once more...."
— Mary Stewart (The Moon-Spinners)
Just look at all those exciting buds out there! :) I know what you mean though, when it's dark it's hard to imagine warm sunny days again isn't it?!xx
ReplyDeleteBeautiful. Thank you. Like a gift of words on a dark and windy afternoon.
ReplyDeleteA night of no moon is very special "My heart enjoys the skies painted thick with stars" your description bought that passage back to the front of my mind..I can "see" thick with stars as I read this ..lovely Thank you
ReplyDeleteMary Stewart definitely expesses it better than I can
"The best words in the best order...one always got the same shock of recognition and delight when someone's words swam up to meet a thought or name a picture. Poetry was awful good material to think with."
The moon dances her slow and stately pavane through the night sky, clad in a gown of midnight velvet spangled with stars. As she twirls through the steps of her dance, her white face turns away from our view and for a time, all we see is her night-dark hair. But soon her beautiful white face will twirl into view again.
ReplyDeleteThe Moon Spinners was my favourite movie & book when I was 9 years old! Thank you for the reminder on this dark beginning of the Year of the Rabbit moon.
ReplyDeleteAll of your words and those of the others who wrote to you are so lovely!
ReplyDeleteI've never read any of Mary Stewart's writing...I think I should.
Jane