September 4

I sleep long and hard, my dreams vivid, colorful. I wake lightly, keeping my eyes shut for as long as I can. It’s fully morning and I am again myself.

Downstairs, I find my husband at the kitchen table, the coffee already made. In the dawning light, I see out into the backyard: a lily we transplanted from our neighbor has finally bloomed, a bright, white blossom against the early green. Pouring my coffee, I say I hadn’t noticed it yesterday when I mowed the lawn.

“Maybe yesterday was a full moon,” he said, but I misheard him. Not a full moon, but wasn’t in bloom.

Still, I wonder if last night was a full moon. I’d seen the moon through the bathroom window last night, lower than usual and bright. A quick check and I see that the full moon was two nights ago. I’d hardly noticed.

Do flowers bloom according to the moon? I wonder. I have no idea, but I like the thought. Summer’s ending and everything is still full and wide, palms open, fingers outstretched. And the moon, too, is wide and low, a smiling silver dollar.

This is what I learn about the moon: a handful of flowers do, in fact, bloom during a full moon. They’re uncreatively called moon flowers, but the name suits them. Most are white and are the floral equivalent of the moon’s face. A closer look at our flower and it seems feasible that it’s a moon flower. Since it’s new to us, though, we don’t know for sure.

I also learn that the lunar calendar is tied to a branch of farming philosophy and championed by the Farmers’ Almanac. Gardening by the moon means sowing, planting, weeding, and harvesting according to the moon’s phases. I’m no farmer, but I wonder how I don’t know this. It’s the water in the ground and in plants that’s affected by the moon, not only its phase but its place in the cosmos throughout the year.

Apparently, today is a poor time to plant, but the next few days are good for transplanting or planting root crops. A few days after that, planted seeds tend to rot in the ground, according to the lunar farming calendar.

I think of William Carlos Williams’s poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow”—so much depends / upon // a red wheel / barrow. So much depends on the moon, I think, and also the sun and the stars. So much depends on what we see, where we focus our eyes, or on a word, heard or misheard.

It also depends on whether the coffee is hot and if we can shake our dream selves awake in time. It depends on how many days are left or if we’re counting them at all. So much, so much depends on arms, stretched full and wide, palms open, our smiling silver dollar selves, our waking selves, embracing another day.