Reading Through a Moonless Night

Night has fled by while I wandered in books. I barely noticed the absence of the moon. Now its waning crescent rises behind the trees, even as the sky turns pale with the glow of the following sun. Like the waning moon, I have arrived late. The words in my books are old, and cast only a reflected light from once-brilliant worlds. Unlike the sun, an age having set will not return. I wander the shades of cities and empires, my guides and companions the dried paper breath of dead poets and sages. In my world, they are ghosts, but I feel myself a ghost in theirs. In a thousand years, will some living thought brush this moment? Is that the source of the chill I feel? Already, the pale shadows cast in moonlight dissolve in the glow of the unrisen sun. Now shadowless, I might be transparent.

( Chinese Verse )

Later

Ok. This is one of those days when I must accept that I will never catch up.

(Why does everyone post so much on Thursdays?)

I have some thoughts on the absence of larks where the field has vanished beneath houses. Something to not forget for later.

Later, always later.