Honeycomb Moon

At the Water’s Edge: White September 2, 2016

White-capped waves roll under white clouds that scudder across a blue-white washed-out sky. The day, hazy at first, has lightened into quiet — save for the soft shushing of the water and the background hum of buzzing insects, all is silent. Even the wind makes no sound, sighing high in the bleached sky where only the clouds feel its gentle nudge. The sun blazes behind the clouds, dispersing its heat on a lazy earth, but holding fast to its golden glow, keeping it greedily for itself, the clouds backlit while soaking up the honeyed rays, unable to share, though, unlike the sun, willing. Generous, they are impotent in the face of their own nature, their inability to create light. The white-topped waves fail to notice anything amiss and continue to roll toward the pale sand beach.

And this is where the white waves find her, on the pale sand beach, cloaked in white, a mirror of the scuddering clouds. She sits now at the water’s edge and the white waves spiral around her, pushing into her skirt and then receding in a rhythmic pulse tapped out by the hidden moon, leaving in their wake a large white snake, which hisses, but does not strike, does not leave. In her hand the woman holds an earthen bowl filled with warm turquoise water shimmering with crystals within. She tips the bowl slightly to show the white snake, who merely nods.

The water in the bowl bubbles and boils and the crystals in the warm turquoise water rearrange themselves and rise from the bowl, a shimmering tree that speaks of life in its light, and causes the white snake to dance, as if only now it has heard the melody tapped out by the hidden moon. The waves on the shore darken and the greedy sun retreats, as the glowing tree grows and encompasses all the light there is to see. The clouds give up their brightness easily, willingly, just as happy to be grey or black as white. To them, only the wind has consequence.