You put on the shoes, don a jacket and head out into the night. The road is empty at this late hour and the only sounds you hear are that of houses sleeping or an occasional dog bark. You orient yourself with the nearly full moon, a white coin in an unusually clear sky. You have been closeted with yourself all day, so you decide to head to the university campus close by, hoping to catch the hum of conversations, an occasionally shout or some diffuse laughter. You are not interested in the content of such overheard talk; just its presence is what you want. This is just as you go to the farmers market to feast on the visual palette as much as to buy food.

On the other side of the road you see a group of students headed in the same general direction. A young woman in this group, for some reason, begins to laugh. It’s a free laugh, the kind one hears between old friends who have very few secrets left to hide from one another. At the fork you turn and take the road that enables you to walk into the moon, eyes fixed on it just as a compass comes to rest at the North Pole. You see it cradled in the branches of oaks, and then climbs on to the top of the chapel’s steeple. You had read Kazantzakis in ‘Zorba The Greek’, describes such a scene, in which the moon is hidden by passing clouds and then uncovered, as a hen laying a big white egg. You play the same game and call this moon over the steeple an inverted exclamation mark. It somehow fits this night, where everything is lit and is a unsurprise.

You pause on the bridge that runs over a ravine to hear the sound of the small stream that runs below. You say to yourself, that is how kissing a woman at this point would sound, just like that gurgle of pleasure. You walk further to the quadrangle. It’s absolutely empty tonight. You veer off the path and cut across the quadrangle, walking sideways. The roofs of the buildings facing you become a stage for the moon. You want to write a poem, but you can’t find the require thread to string all these discrete images. The silence, while welcome, makes you realize that it is now spring break.

You head home. On the way you pull the branch of a star magnolia to smell it’s flowers. The clutch of these trees with their white flowers makes you want to make a metaphor out of them. You say, ‘these are the moon’s teardrops’. A very cloying one! Soon the moon is behind you, riding on your back and shoulder. You bend your neck and send a pinecone skittering down the sidewalk.