How to catch the moon
Jane Nash: Poetic prose: ‘How to catch the moon’
Bring out the scent of a lover so embossed into your olfactory memory that satiation is the only response.
Perhaps it’s from two flowers on sale out the front of the supermarket. Cut price for wilted cut flowers. Hope for a cloudless night and then summon the memories of watching films, holding hands, catching buses together and watching a very old cat nibble at a block of South American chocolate through silver and brown paper.
Look up into the heavens. Now listen for the promises of someone who never left the building – experiment with the words they said. ‘Leaf’ they wrote on a leaf. You should wear your hair up, you have a different face when it’s up. try writing it in third person now. The moon? Mr Moon, you mean?’
Bring the sound of a dog’s panting when smiling. Dogs do smile. Cats steal dark chocolate and dogs smile and pant in happiness.
Still standing outside, facing the empty sky, full of crystalline patterns from behind where the hidden sun exists until dawn.
Within the dreams of the tiniest of children lie the clues of where to find the magical net of luminous threads.
When you track down the illusive silver penny of the sky, when you lay your magical threads upon the obscured alabaster plate, they will quickly melt into its surface, crinkling into craters and bumpy lines quite visible on a cold cloudless night. Pull hard, fear only the speed at which you will succeed and capture it with exuberance, excitement and energy.
It must be renewable energy. I’ve brought down three already. They’re locked up in the toolshed, mounted on a very large cheese board. They’re magic and I really don’t need any more.
There’s a trade in moonbeams. Even if you manage to catch the moon and bring it home, you have to keep it shining in whatever case you keep it in or it will be unable to squeeze out the djinn tears which sparkle and bathe lovers, livestock left out and every rock trodden into each desert on the globe.
