Just How High the Moon

My best friend came to stay;
they’d prepared a room – especially,
almost opposite mine.

She suggests a stroll – a walk
around the grounds. Dusk – fast falling;
weeks since last I’d gone outside.

A potpourri of things refresh
my senses; lambs, bleating
in a nearby field, a barn owl’s screech...
as we stop for a moment on the porch.

A moth, beguiled by the lamp,
flits inside, and disappears.
Did I watch out of envy,
or out of pity?

Above us – in a blueberry sky,
a harvest moon shrugs off
a cloud, and I smile, recalling a book
I’d once read, ‘The Moon’s a Balloon’.

“So good to see you happy, for a change,”
she says, as in my mind imagination
runs wild, and I catch hold of its string
as it floats on by...

the wind through my hair – fresh air
on my face. Sounds corny I know,
but I’d forgotten what it felt like...

Like school-kids we giggle – mad
she calls me; both on a high, but then,
how high is high?

Roughly speaking, as much distance
as I can put between me, and these
shackles of mine.

I watch as the moth flies free.
Maybe ask it? Maybe it knows
how high the moon, as it makes
for its darker side, as she takes me
back inside.