New Moon

No one knew

what to make of the New Moon

when it first appeared,

and

maybe no one wanted to know what to make of it.

We already knew about new moons.

We saw the same new moon every month,

sometimes twice a month

depending on how the phases moved alongside our calendar.

No one wanted to believe it,

but willful disbelief 

could only last for so long with

the new body,

night and day up in the sky,

fully formed and never phasing,

never waxing,

never waning,

as silent as the sun was loud,

as cold as the sun was hot.

When asked about the New Moon,

experts

were,

all of a sudden,

no longer experts,

and the words on expensive pieces of paper

meant little in the moment.

They tried to calm the panicked,

to still the bewildered,

tried to preach a gospel full of tropes and unknowns:

yes, the New Moon would bring many changes,

and those changes could upend everything

we knew;

but, the New Moon was neither good nor bad,

and its appearance neither fortunate nor unfortunate.

Some believed too little,

some believed too much.

The New Moon did upend everything

we knew about the world,

with there being two open eyes in the sky,

and a third that came about as regularly as it did before.

Many didn’t appreciate the change in the world,

and thinking if only the New Moon could be destroyed

or moved

or blocked somehow,

then maybe the Old Days

and the Old Ways

with only one eye fully open might come again.

Maybe blood on the ground would change the heavens.

It didn’t, of course, but

maybe

just the same.

While the first year of the New Moon

brought great hardship and great pain,

the New Moon reset the world,

balanced the world,

brought two eyes to the world.