Category: Scenes from Life

The Daylight Moon

Long ago, when the ancient bamboo-cutter penetrated the forest at the edge of the city, there was a darkness like twilight among the trees, and the forest resembled our quiet street, as it sometimes appears late on a winter afternoon. This was a very long time ago, and the mountain did not yet have its present name. The old man lived with his wife in a simple house near the crossing of two country roads. Now, a bridge crosses the river, and the shallows have been filled in with stones, where the old woman stooped to wash their clothes, and saw a group of three traders and a lone horsemen ford the stream. On that day, the old man was in a sad frame of mind. He barely noticed the light when it first appeared: the yellow light of the harvest moon, streaming from a thicket of tall bamboo. Everyone knows the rest of the story: how the infant daughter of the moon appeared from within the bamboo; how the bamboo-cutter and his wife rejoiced at the chance to raise such a beautiful child; how the girl tested and rejected five devoted suitors; how the Emperor himself exchanged verses with her; and how she finally took leave of her adoptive parents, on a day when the harvest moon appeared in a daylight sky. Sometimes, even on winter days, when our feet are cold and our eyes crackle in the dry air, the daughter of the moon returns in daylight. A little yellow light finds a pile of stones in a mountain clearing, and the moon mourns again at the old couple’s grave.

Photo: The Daylight Moon, Early Afternoon, 7 January 2006

–CR, 14 January 2006

14 January 2006