William D. Waltz
from Still Life with Baby and Brontosaurus
I’m lucky, I guess. When the moon’s a big bright orb, an incandescent gourd hung from the night sky’s black field, and the cloudcover a thin canopy of translucent leaves, moonlight stakes out a series of rectangular boxes across the wood floor like an archaeologist’s grid over a dig. As the night transpires, the moon circles the house, funneling light through each window in its turn. I stumbled upon this silent cycle when we moved our bed into the attic and started sleeping under a skylight. As I walked the floor with my baby daughter, I came to see what the moon does, and, in its light, I saw for a moment, a flash, my father, older and frailer, in her countenance, in my arms. All of us are moving toward our own personal extinction.