Someone once asked me: A poem

Someone once asked me "Which do you prefer--the sun or the moon?"

I said the moon.


The question was asked by someone whom I had convinced myself I liked ever so much
And he supposedly liked me ever so much.
But, as these things go, my head eventually cleared and I realized
that I was more enamored with
"the idea of."
I don't see him anymore and I honestly cannot remember most of what we talked about

I do remember the question about the moon.

It was supposed to be an original get-to-know-you kind of question I'm sure

Nothing particularly special

And yet, it struck me.

I thought about it for a moment. Which did I prefer? I pictured both..

The sun. The moon. The moon. The sun.

The sun is bright and seems cheerful enough. I conjured up sparkling images of beaches and waves and paradise islands
And suddenly I felt warm--uncomfortably so.
It is also, I think, loud and relentless and impossible to ignore


The funny thing is, you can't really look at it--I mean the sun.

It is beautiful in an awe-inspiring sort of way but
no one can ever get close to it.

because it would consume them

Perhaps that is why many people have believed the sun to be a god.

I was thinking about the moon last night.

The sky was blue-black and clear and the moon was enormous. It startled me a bit.

A man on the radio was describing his trip to a sacred lake beside a sacred mountain in Tibet.

His voice was rather monotonous and it would have been unbearable if it hadn't been tinged with a hint of an unusual sense of humor.
He said something about the moon in Tibet and I looked up at the moon where I live and I thought about it.


Sometimes the moon seems cold, like a great orb of blinding white ice.

then I imagine winter in Narnia

And other times it is calm and gentle or even sleepy.

As if the moon has actually closed it's eyes and gone to sleep

Suspended in space, completely oblivious to everything but it's

moon dreams.
The idea makes me giggle.


On the nights the moon is red, looming ominously in the sky
I catch my breath and wonder what will happen next.
I stare, then look away, then stare again, fascinated
When the moon is red I think everyone who sees it must feel the weight of the red moon.


Of course, there are nights when it is invisible
and that alone makes you long for it to return.
it's absence
seems strange


I don't really believe in faeries or fauns or any other mythical beings, but

every now and then

I wish that such creatures existed so that I might, sometime, happen upon them dancing and leaping in the moonlight

Like a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I did not give all of these reasons when I was asked.

At the time I simply said

Because the moon is more

Mysterious.