Last Quarter

The Snow Moon Wanes

February 20, 2025

Durham, North Carolina

Yesterday it snowed for hours. From early afternoon into the evening.

Still snowing today. For a few hours this morning it was clear. Cool and stone silent.

I walked out to the woods behind the house. There’s a power line easement on the back acre.

Pine saplings in the easement.

I was back sixty years to snow days gone. Tasted the needles. Pine snow.

The Snow Moon wanes. It’s passing the gibbous phase and moving into the last quarter. The decreasing moonlight reminds us that we need to let go. It’s time to shed the scales and skins of the past and get clean.

As the orb diminishes it grins. The Cheshire Cat looks down on us. We can learn from it.

As I embrace my last quarter I learn from the moon. I spend less time offering my light to others and turn my face inward. I grin recollecting a life well spent. My gaze goes away from the earth and toward the stars. The vast depths of the universe opens to me. My mirror signals to far off galaxies. I was here.

My Snow Moon spent making plans is tempered by the grin of the cat. He knows plans are for fools.

So I taste the snow on the pines and cedars. Enjoy the time. Wallow in the memories of snows past.