The Road Between

I'm driving to work along narrow country roads with no shoulders. The school year is no longer new enchanting infant, not yet settled and comfortable adult. I'm bleary-soul tired from the weeks of full tilt preparation; the switch from elastic free-flowing no-clock time to blocks of tightly scheduled time crammed too full; my resistance to the current state of my life.

The almost full Harvest Moon lights my way from the western horizon and beckons its Sister Sun who is just beginning to send emissaries of light up from the eastern horizon. Old moon, at the end of its cycle. New sun, birthing a new day.

Flanked by softly misted fields where earnest ginger hens graze under the feet of placid ginger cows on one side and regal russet horses graze on the other, I travel alone between old and new. 

I love the moon and its ability to color night into dusky day. I love its tidal pull that calls my blood even though I am years beyond the evidence of those cycles. I love its unhurried exit from the stage that is soon to be flooded by fresh new light.

I think about the parts of my life that are old and full and on the brink of  waning into darkness. I love them, too. But I am achingly ready for them to settle beneath the western mountains.

The eastern sky grows brighter and brighter, dimming the moon's borrowed light with its brilliance. Faint blush of hinted day expands into softly translucent red that bleeds vibrant violet life into the gray between. 

I am ravenously hungry, deeply impatient for the light of my new life to dominate the sky. I've exhausted and frustrated myself in fruitless efforts to push the moon down and pull the sun up. As I continue along the road to school, held softly in air that contains both the lingering warmth of summer and the encroaching coolness of winter, I am grateful for the companionship of contrasts. 

The cycles have their own rhythm. Sun, Moon. Day, Night. Summer, Winter. Birth, Death. I can dance along or be dragged along. I cannot change the tempo or the tune. They will not - cannot - forget me or leave me behind. 

The moon will set soon enough. The sun will rise when it does. In the meantime, I travel a narrow road with no shoulders, kept company by chickens, cows and horses the color of earth, held in the arms of light and shadows.