White Baboon

Wait, where are we going again?A tribal circle. In honor of the full moon. To pray for world peace. Right.I saw a bad moon rising. Earlier.That day. After picking olives and finding the abandoned, hard-shelled houses of turtles and snails in the earth. Scraping my skin against the metal of the tree markers. Combing the tree as I do my hair, tugging at the knots of olives and waiting for the satisfying plop. Smashing olives with my bare feet. My purple-tinsel scarf wound around my head like a gypsy.

But trouble was not on the way. Tonight there will be nothing but a tribal circle in the round, stone wall dwelling in the orchard. The smoke of burning sage will be tossed into my fleece. I will sit, unspeaking, on a mat, staring at the well-tended fire for hours. I will meditate. I will struggle to get settled-I mean situated. I will see faces in the coals.What do you see?

There was no earthquake. No lightning. Not nasty weather. Nothing all that dramatic. But there was the sound of palm to drum and a child’s cough. The rhythm of shoes in the dirt. The music of a far-away Turkish wedding. The rooster’s insistent cockadoodledoos. The sound of Michael’s breathing.

Don’t come round tonight. And I didn’t. Not there. It wasn’t my time. I had both feet on the ground. No floating or zoning or rising. I was merely an observer, looking in. Others stared into their own possibilities. I just kept staring at the moon.

It’s bound to take your life. No, but I can see how they thought the moon might. I was giving it power with my own energy And receiving. . .something back. Staring like I’d never seen it before. It was no longer the moon, but the perfectly round polka-dot-on-a-dress sized window to another world. The pure white light of another galaxy. I felt so small, but part of something so big. Humbled and empowered. In one moment. And the gravity of my thoughts drug me to the ground. Kept me there. Clutching the earth.

There’s a bad moon on the rise. It was still going up when we left the circle and held each other’s soft, gloved doll-hands down the orchard path at 1AM. That’s when we saw the Yakaba horse. Calmly eating grass in the moonlight, shimmering olive branches between its head and the sky. A creature of the universe. Like me. Like Michael.And I. . kkkkk. . .kkkk. . . . I felt the energy kick in. The connection. The current through all of us. For just a few seconds. Before it slipped through my fingers once again.