In her 2019 book “Late Migrations,” essayist Margaret Renkl writes about what she calls "backyard nature." Renkl scatters short autobiographical essays in between short nature pieces, so that her life story and her life’s passion intertwine, like a fence post and a trumpet vine.
“Snow Moon” weaves Renkl’s exuberant and plaintive natural stories with the personal. “Every day the world is teaching me what I need to know to be in the world,” Renkl writes.
Arranged for SATB, violin, and cello, this piece voices Renkl’s reflections to savor everything about the moment.
Snow Moon
Here in this first-ring suburban neighborhood,
we are far from the spongy paths of the forest peoples who gave this moon its name,
but we are not far from the snow moon itself,
which rises through the bare trees as it has done since long before we were here.
The world is warming now,
and this year the snow moon heralds no snow:
the star magnolia is in full bloom weeks before its time,
but still the snow moon rises between the black branches.
Let the earth cast a shadow across its golden glow.
Let the green-headed comet streak past,
unclasped, on its journey through the darkness.
These are our sights and our sounds
the smell of our own breath in our cupped hands,
to glimpse a flare of light on moving water.
I don’t remember where I set the tapestry.
I don’t remember taking off my shoes,
or whether I was hungry,
or how we started kissing.
All I remember is the kiss that lasted for hours in the dark;
Oh, the stars were like the stars in a fairy tale,
that reached across the sky
from the edge of the world to the edge of the world.
I tilted my head back and felt the whole planet [world] spinning,
A clatter of bare sycamore branches
a rattle of seedpods in trumpet vines
Sometimes there are salamanders on the bank.
Sometimes there are tadpoles in the foamy water
Sometimes there are crawdads under the rocks
Always there are dragonflies - blue, and bottle green,
And always there are jays scolding from the dark pines.
I pause to check the milkweed,
and a caterpillar halts midbite,
its face still lowered to the leaf.
I walk down my driveway at dusk,
and the cottontail under the pine tree freezes,
not a single twitch of ear or nose.
On the roadside, the doe stands immobile,
as still as the trees that rise above her.
Every day the world is teaching me what I need to know to be in the world.
In the stir of too much motion:
Hold still.
Be quiet.
Listen.
Let the earth cast a shadow across its golden glow.
Let the green-headed comet streak past,
unclasped, on its journey through the darkness.
Still the snow moon rises and sets as it must.
Its steadfast path is tied to ours.