NIGHT JEWELRY

In the city all the windows stare at other windows, the day is indoors, the night is neon, everyone busy moving - no one yet where they want to be - only pausing, then hurrying to otherwheres, and I was one.

When I got home to the mountain last night, though, the house by the forest was dark, the all-around filled with a quiet calm proven by the singing frogs, the sky-high air aglow with the light of the swelling moon reflecting off the rice paddies trickle-flooding down the mountain, the hundreds of single perfect mirrors of still water giving back the moonlight like thin sheets of silver against a vast genuine darkness pierced here and there with starlight, it was like being inside a moonstone.