The silver apples of the moon
I was returning home this evening from the new European version of the old Kwik Save. Yes, it was our local Lidl. Armed with a few bargains, I had the sudden urge to treat myself to a short drive along the coastal road.
Yes, we have that privilege here in West Sussex, you know. It’s one of the few perks to living here. It’s always a treat for someone like me, born and bred in a northern industrial town – whose nearest ‘beach’ was a mudbank on the Mersey.
ABSENT FRIENDS
Sure enough, as I turned the corner along Sea Road, I wasn’t disappointed. The moon was shining brightly on the dark waves of the English Channel, lighting up a path across the water’s surface.
It was quite magical, to say the least. So I had to stop the car, get out, and enjoy the view for just a few minutes. I could’ve stayed there for ages. The moon cut a way over the sea, while the waves gently swished the pebbles from the beach.
Shapes were being formed in the moonlight. I wondered if this ethereal causeway might allow me to visit some absent friends, or they to visit us – like the ‘rainbow bridge’ from Viking legend.
It’s quite a lonely life without close friends, isn’t it? When they’re gone, your mind plays with the environment around you, trying to reshape them in the mist. For without them, we are like rudderless little boats, bobbing on a grim tide.
FAERIE DUST
But even more, the moon’s silvery trail almost makes time stand still, as if in readiness for God himself to speak. That’s what we all really want, isn’t it? We want a message from heaven. Not just someone’s opinion about God. But God himself to say ‘hello’. Or anything. Just a voice from beyond this world.
W B Yeats captured something of this feeling in his mystical poem The Song of Wandering Aengus. There is an otherworldly atmosphere to it, as the piece tells the story of a supernatural encounter.
It’s coated with faerie dust, as much of Yeats’ work is. But a hunger for heaven shines through: ‘But something rustled on the floor/And someone called me by my name’. (Photo: skyscape by Clive Price)
