The point of a moonbeam, dearest child,” said my mother
“Is a sign to heaven the young alone may follow
And adults never find.”
“Don’t grown-ups go there ever?”
I asked as I reclined at her side on a pillow
Voluptuously drowning, drowsy fingers clutching
At straws of her hair. “I thought only old people died?”
“They do;” she replied. “But the way is found by touching –
And the texture of light is lost to an older mind.”
Persisting, warm in the glow of her skin by lamplight
And eye-wide in the white-bright fronds of the slivered moon:
“Will I go somewhere full of old people?” I asked her,
“And follow a shivery moonbeam – why?”
“Some are called,”
She responded, a mystic gleam in her saddened eye.
“I wouldn’t answer!” Said I.
“Sleep now, child.” The light was
Extinguished as I burrowed deep in the chasms of bed.
Flowing words in the warm like a dream to enclose me.
“Here. This is Heaven for me.” I said.
“Perhaps for you.”
From an outer world her cold voice clattered like pebbles.
“Why is my Heaven always tomorrow?” She wondered.
I lay still in the hollow where my father once slept.
Tomorrow? Would he come, then, tomorrow? We pondered
The unasked question.
“No, nor ever.” My mother said.
Very absorbing. So many things touched upon in words so few.
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Thank you for reading and commenting. This one seems to be from so long ago!
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Could you give an insight into the choice of title?
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I spent a slice of my childhood by the sea, and to my young mind the ‘moon river’ (the light of the moon’s reflection on the water) was a real entity, a path that I could follow to the horizon and beyond. I guess moonbeams were a mystic ingredient in my life then.
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