The Day Moon

She sat in the chaise lounge in her living room, her left index finger absent-mindedly tracing circles on the gold and white brocade of the arm rest.

Her eyes moved sporadically from the antique crystal bowl on the mantle, to the crystal candle-holder with its red pillar candle next to it, down to the massed bouquet of dried red, peach and multicolored roses in the oversized vase beside the fireplace, seeing but not really seeing any of it.

A movement out the window caught her eye, but it was nothing to keep her attention. The foothills, some thirty miles away, looked much closer in the early evening light with that warm soft gold glow to them. The mountains had faded into their late afternoon grey-blue indistinctness.

Without consciously thinking, she got up and walked over to the large picture window beside the fireplace.

That’s when she saw it – the full moon nested in a thin scattering of clouds above the ridge to the south. It’s lovely pale yellowy-pink light highlighting the cloud edges better than any artist could paint them.

She stared at it, not thinking much of anything consciously, but as if under the surface thought-clouds were scudding across her mental skyline as if a full-blown chinook was at work.

She’d been standing there silently like that for a good ten minutes when suddenly the thought was there as clear now as the moon was with the clouds gone. And as simply and clearly as that she knew now what she would do.

© 2007, Evelyn Grace Marinoski