Tonight, we drive across the county to visit with my Dad. It is incredibly green and moist; unusual for late August in the Hudson Valley and such a contrast to Idaho. On the way home, the waning moon rises–huge and orange. It reminds of an August night in 1971. I was living in the North Valley on Acequia Trail, two houses away from the bosque…walking distance to the Rio Grande. Sunflowers and Black-eyed Susans lined the washboard dirt roads; magpies and mockbirds adorned the fence posts and the sky was flat cloudless turquoise. Evenings were cool; green chilis, corn, tomatoes and peaches were abundant; the orchards were almost ready for harvest. The house smelled like posole and tamales. When the waning moon rose from behind the Sandia Mountains, it was enormous, orange and silent. That night, I read this Rilke poem for the first time…it has stayed with me all these years…
INITIATION
Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know each bit;
your house is the last before the infinite,
whoever you are.
Then with your eyes that wearily
scarce lift themselves from the worn-out door-stone
slowly you raise a shadowy black tree
and fix it on the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world (and it shall grow
and ripen as a word, unspoken, still).
When you have grasped its meaning with your will,
then tenderly your eyes will let it go…
