Seven Hundred Full Moons

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My lifetime has witnessed approximately 700 full moons. Come the year 2012, my birth month will hold two full moons, with the first full moon of that month falling on the day of my birth.
He shook my hand insincerely and walked back up the hill and back into the shadows. And the thing that I remember most is the way that the light of the full moon made his grimace look more like a smile. But I felt that his eyes told the truth. He held nothing but contempt for me.
Tonight's moon lit the landscape and made the cold December night as inviting as a midsummer campfire. I walked the perimeter drawing on my pipe watching the mix of heat and smoke rise up high and disappear into the night sky. Peeking in on the chickens always draws a smile from me and tonight was no different. The light of the moon faded their colors to shades of light and dark, white and gray, making only my familiarity distinguish one hen from the other. A bucket left in a corner of the coop startled me for one tenth of a second and had me thinking that perhaps a skunk or a cat had wandered in.
The moon forever reveals her one and only bright face and the light that she shines is not her own. What degree of truth does her light send our way? Grimace, startle, shades of gray.
The moon looks very different when she holds high over the big sky of Montana or rises up through the hills of Vermont. The same moon. The same refractory. The moon held as a mirror or a magnifying glass playing tricks upon our imagination and what we think we see. What we think we see. Grimace, startle, shades of gray.
Illusion abounds.

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