The darkness fell from above with a silent, heavy chill and tiny fires ignited in the sky.
The first full moon following the vernal equinox rose in the east white hot with sunlight. It was all reflection — all mare and mountain and crater, simplified into a perfect white rose on the horizon.
“I’m round,” cried the moon, preening.
It spun, it basked, it flew in a cork screw pattern, it wobbled, it pulled up its dress around its ankles; it ran up the sky after the sun.
“Wait,” the moon cried out to the sun, “I’m coming.”
“Do you have your light with you?” called the sun, “or have you too fallen asleep?’
“No, I have it,” answered the moon, “I’m ready.”
The earth spun, the moon rose, the sun danced, the moon caught his arm, the wedding procession proceeded.
The stars exploded in the sky.
“She’s beautiful,” the sun called out, “She is absolutely the good of the exceptionally, perfect and superlative good!”
The moon raced now to the zenith of the sky, moving in a veil of light, carrying with it all the eyes of the earth.
“Look,” said the earth, “The stars, they’re falling down now!”
Orion, draped in moonlight, belt all glittery and sword glowing with the great nebulae, fell into the west now, bow first, plunging into the dark sea.
Then brilliant white Rigel and flaming, red Betelgeuse and all their fellow strong men fell into the inky black water and drowned in an eerie, blinking, watery grave.
“They’re gone,” called the moon. “But here come some more!”
And now a thousand galaxies and more rose up in the east with Virgo leading them, attending her like an army of glowing white angels, hot and fierce with a purging holy fire.
The realm of the galaxies passed up over the moon, a flaming, floral canopy in deep space, sprouting through Aristotle’s crystalline spheres.
“The sprials, the ellipticals, the edge-ons,” said the moon, “they are my bouquets. The stars, the galaxies — they are field upon field of bright bloom!”
Just before dawn planets appeared in the southeast like a glowing necklace draped on the dark neck of the earth.
The moon sat on the water.
The universe gawked.
The horizon blushed.
“Do it again!” came the command from beyond everywhere.
“We will, we will,” cried out all the luminaries, “tomorrow night!”
Modern Fables and Antifables 