Church of the Falling Moon

I used to look up at a sky I considered

empty of the things I didn’t know about.

I knew the moon 

and, broadly,

I knew the stars.

I could show you

Mars and Venus,

maybe others, too, 

if I knew to look for them.

But,

it was always

Down Here

and

Up There

and Up There

was grand and unchanging, 

as constant as constant could be.

I thought Down Here was important.

The New Moon changed everything,

especially when we all learned it was two 

hundred miles wide.

Nothing else mattered.

Destiny made known its name,

made known that everything 

would be put to rest.

Every score would be settled,

every debt would be cleared,

every imbalance balanced.

Everything would be quiet

and everything would be perfect.

I worried about all of this,

about Our Lady of the Two Hundred Miles

growing larger by the day

until she birthed through the atmosphere,

her great fire 

smashing to the core of our existence,

and turning our Great Mother to dust.

The Great Fear 

told me

everything would always be for naught,

that nothing would survive Our Lady.

The people who didn’t want to believe were being 

forced to believe.

The truth was the truth.

Our Lady was real.

But, if Our Lady was real,

so was the Great Mother

and while She might be blasted into a trillion pieces

we would be a part of those trillion pieces.

Now, when I look up at the sky, I know it isn’t empty

even if I don’t know what’s up there.