MOONLAKE

When returning home last night, while motorcycling up the mountain beneath the full moon I looked forward as always to arriving at the house and, once afoot again walking out into the road in the sudden dark to look at the moon, at that time about an arm's-length handlength above the Lake, because it is always an inspiring light show.

Usually when the moon is full and the sky clear and still, the Lake is calmish, the moonlight stretching in a broad but clearly defined silver band from this shore to the island off the other coast, but last night, even though there was no wind up on the mountain, the Lake was stippled all over with brightness as by a Matisse brush, the moonlight a tarnished silver vibration everywhere on the water: stronger beneath the moon itself, yet widening and so waning as it approached the far shore. Somehow it reminded me of the way memories are...