all is calm, all is bright

I stood in the middle of the dark street, hot and flushed after my two-mile run, and looked up at the slightly obscured moon. The clouds had created a halo around it. Pausing there in the road, I found a childish and yet wholly soothing sense of security from these lines that floated to the surface of my thoughts:

I see the moon and the moon sees me
God sees the moon and God sees me

I must have stood there for ten minutes or more, breathing, praying, thinking. The neighbor girl was practicing "Silent Night" on the piano and I smiled, thinking how appropriate the song seemed at that moment. She played hesitantly and yet with the jaunty flourish of an amateur pianist that somehow can make a simple song sound pretty. I was happy to be standing there, sweaty and tired, alone in the middle of the road in a Japanese neighborhood. Just watching the moon. Because the moon--it does not change. No matter how far away from home I might be, the moon is the same.

You hem me in, behind and before...