To the Moon
And by that, I mean, To You
I’ve been preparing a post on frozen oceans and painted roads and dolphin tails and a dog’s nose and fresh beginnings. And then, I was reading a poem I love. This, I thought, let me breathe deeply. Something made me think of my time in Cuba, and flipping through my photos, I stopped on one and took it in. This, I thought, made me look again. I listened to my 13-year-old nephew playing the sax. This, I thought, made me brim with joy. And then, What gifts.
Which made me think of you. The gift of your attention, your words, your friendship. And I knew these three gifts are what I most wanted to share with you as we close out another year of the Gregorian calendar and look out at the ribbon of road that lies ahead.
My nephew’s brilliant, the mind of an engineer (you should see his creations), and kind. I got a haircut, which I didn’t mention to him. When I came up the stairs to listen, he glanced my way and said, “Dope hair.”
“Will you play that for my friends?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said.
Remember
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
—Joy Harjo, US poet laureate 2019
Look up: A Havana moon
Listen: An alto sax
“Fly Me to the Moon,” by Benji on alto sax
Thank you for reading, for liking, for commenting, for restacking! Your readership and engagement means the world to me and helps other people find this rolling desk.
For the comments: What do you want to remember in 2025?
Where have we been?
Here at the Rolling Desk, we’re all about roads. Three favorites shared in 2024:
Just north of Fairbanks, Alaska, USA
Let me show you a stereoscopic image. See that clutch of trees in the corner, bare branches just a shade darker than night stretching to the sky. Look closer. Do you see them now—the vans, two rectangles tucked down among the trunks, noses nearly brushing to form the tip of a triangle whose base is forest? One’s the colour of rubies, the taller one of silver pearls.
Now back to the centre of the frame. At first, it seems an empty slate road alongside an obsidian field on a moonless night. Look closer. Two tiny clouds hang in the air. Breath transformed. Closer Now you see the figures, bouncing foot to foot, gloved hands clutching each other’s arms, eyes wide.
They’re looking up. They’re there for sky.
On the way to Canoa, Ecuador
The bus disappears in a haze of golden flecks. Then dust rejoins earth, and the sun’s rays are low, and there’s not so much as a signpost, and I have to decide. What now?
I’m in one of just three countries in the world that lie directly on the equator. I’m new here in Ecuador, and I’ve only just made my way to the sea after a few days in Quito, high in the Andean foothills. So, I don’t yet know what this proximity to center means for sunsets.
I do know the day’s end is soon. I know the town I want is roughly north. I know this road—a slim dirt road, slightly more mustard than the yellow sand it cuts through—will look different after nightfall. I pull my backpack tight around my hips, put the sun to my left, and walk.
Through my mind early on in a new medical diagnosis
I sleep with the window wide open. I want the outside in. I want the air, heavy and wet. I want the hound and the gull and the underground stirrings only owls can hear—the voles chewing earth loose, pulling chunks away with their forefeet, kicking what they’ve excavated behind them, pressing what remains into intricate tunnel chains.
My niece, in the room down the hall, calls softly from her dreamland. Her baby sister, in the room on the other side of me, stirs, snuffling like babies and warthogs do. Just months back, here for another appointment, I had to bite down on my shirt in the morning to sit up in bed so as not to cry out and wake them.
Do the voles have more sense than me? Does some kind of radar tell them they’re nearing an obstacle neither fang nor claws can work loose? Is that why some tunnel chains run just below the surface while others veer down a foot into earth before spreading out horizontally once more? Or maybe something from below calls.
Where are we going?
Stay tuned for that canvas of a road and that sniffer of pure delight and those creatures of the sea I’ve been pouring onto the page. And up soon after that, meet a man who walked into the forest and came out completely different. And of course, I’ve so many more roads for us to travel together and so much desire to know about the roads you travel—by foot, by tire, in your minds, in your hearts—and to discover the way all our roads meet up and intersect.
As for me, I want to remember that I am “all people and all people” are me, that I am “this universe and this universe” is me. I’m over the moon grateful that we are sharing this dance of language, of life; that we are remembering and looking up and deciphering and listening together; that we are in motion, growing together—wherever we go.
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The moon, the sax, Joy Harjo -- the way it all winds together. Thank you -- just keep writing.
I loved the ‘Remember’ poem! And I’d never seen it before, so thank you for sharing that.
I’m so looking forward to the many roads you’re going to take us down in 2025, Holly.
Happy new year (and happy writing!), my friend. :)