New Moon

"She raised her eyes to the bright stars, looking down so mildly from the wide worlds of air, and, gazing on them, found new stars burst upon her view, and more beyond, and more beyond again, until the whole great expanse sparkled with shining spheres, rising higher and higher in immeasurable space, eternal in their numbers as in their changeless and incorruptible existence.

"She bent over the calm river, and saw them shining in the same majestic order as when the dove beheld them gleaming through the swollen waters, upon the mountain tops down far below, and dead mankind, a million fathoms deep.

"The child sat silently beneath a tree, hushed in her very breath by the stillness of the night, and all its attendant wonders. The time and place awoke reflection, and she thought with a quiet hope-- less hope, perhaps, than resignation--on the past, and present, and what was yet before her." ~Charles Dickens, 'Old Curiosity Shop,' 42

Big hearts carry pain
that others won't feel.
Boundless ones weep
cleansing tears
without knowing why.
Yet at the heart's core
is a hollow that
cannot be touched
by joy or sorrow.
Stars yearn to rest here.
The moon takes off
her veil of light in vain
to know this stillness.
How may you enter the
shrine of holy absence?
Follow your breath.

Painting: The Bohemian, by Renoir