Joe Greco

J o e   G r e c o

Moon Shine

We are children with clouded eyes and liver spots and skin hanging from our jawbones like Daisy, the basset hound, whom we’d ride into the tall grass at dusk in the springtime, as if she were a low-slung Shetland pony. Mother would call us and ring the dinner bell as we lay still, hiding and hoping to steal a few more moments with the stars that slowly asserted themselves, glistening, against the blue-violet sky. We’d gaze up, whispering our plans to build a rocket ship that would blast us up through the cool night for a quick visit, but get us back in time for dessert. We yearn to go no less now, the only difference being we know we never will.

I sit on the porch step, my knees aching in the winter chill, warning me that standing will be a battle. I look up to see a yellow orb framing the head of the gray-haired one and I ask her how the moon can shine so brightly when it is so much older than we. She rings the dinner bell and calls for the little ones to come in from behind the snowdrifts where they’ve hidden, pretending to be polar bears. She looks down and says, “You’ve scuttled across this earth for so many years and yet you haven’t learned a damned thing. You see nothing but reflected light. That old moon is as dead as dead can be.” She rings the bell again, calls more loudly, and then without looking at me says, “What are you waiting for? If you had a brain in your head, you’d get inside and eat your supper before the locusts come and take their turn.”

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