little sister of the moon

at the lacy silhouette 

of pine and birch under moon, 

I tremble with anticipation. 

the sweet mistress of the wood knows my coming, 

and her mysteries are dark and brooding, 

her treasures guarded. 

He had spent nearly seven years fighting for his marriage. It had been a hard and hopeless struggle born in love and carried out first in faith and later, in dogged commitment. Finally the love, the faith, the commitment had all collapsed in a heap, and the marriage of nearly 26 years ground to a halt, its empty shell half buried in the dust of its long drought. The years had drained him of most of the intense painful emotions that his friends promised would overtake him as the separation and divorce became reality. Most did not realize the extent to which he had battled with these emotions and horrors for all the long hard years. Now, as the struggle ended, there were few remnants of sorrow and pain left to engage. He was simply relieved and free.

Then one day he met the little sister of the moon. She was a little taller than him and a few years younger. She had a charm and engaging presence that entirely captivated his heart. She was insightful and rich and restful in the way that mature women are, yet playful and irreverent and restless with a youth that he knew was immune to time. She shared the frustrations and wounding that he had sensed in other women, yet she seemed to have a grace and deep joy that transcended these sorrows. She was balanced and strong, yet vulnerable. He loved her at first sight and loved her more with the passing of time.

One of the most striking things about her was her remarkable intuitive intelligence. It was so incisive, so delicate, so feminine. He sensed that she was far beyond him in her perceptive skills and ability to read and understand and empathically touch the people she encountered. He felt transparent before her. This would have been unnerving and intrusive but for her equal measure of caring and tenderness toward him. He never felt at risk with her, and found himself sharing freely with her from the deepest secret places. Even when he was not confident of how she would respond to the things he told her, he never feared for his safety in revealing them, and was compelled to do so by her openness.

Each of them brought different strengths to their friendship; his quiet masculine world-conquering calm; her fiery nurturing feminine wholeness. And out of these strengths, they forged a friendship that transcended each of their weaknesses and gave strength and wisdom and steadiness to both.

All this transpired in the absence of physical intimacy. It was perhaps this abstinence that permitted their friendship to grow into places and depths he had not previously experienced. In the early stages, he had assumed that physical intimacy would eventually make its way into the relationship as he gained a respectable and healthy distance from his divorce. He had never been this close in a relationship without physical intimacy, and had no sense of such intensity apart from it. As time passed; as they talked freely about this and other secret things, he began to wonder what would happen to them if they ever crossed that threshold. He was not entirely sure that he could successfully make the transition, even though it seemed to him to be a natural possibility. He had so much to learn about the nature of woman, and of intimacy. And sexuality had always been goal oriented; a shortcut to intimacy. Would a physical engagement interfere with the purposeful stately growth and flowering of this sacred friendship?

The answer to this question was not forthcoming, but in due time it would take care of itself one way or another, and whatever it was, the answer would be right and good. He had not always felt so confident of this. In the early stages, he didn’t fully understand the ways that physical intimacy can prematurely short-circuit the blossoming of a truly deep and profound relationship. He had seen it as inevitable that such a full and powerful relationship eventually must turn physical or die. She had seen through his blind spot, and persisted in her remarkable charm and wisdom and strength while he weathered the storm in his heart. She would not acknowledge or deny the possibility of physical intimacy, and yet engaged him at every other level of which he was conscious. She fully understood the implications, and patiently, faithful to her understanding and conviction, taught him this fuller, deeper way.

And so she began to enlighten his quest for the nature of woman. She seemed called to the task. And she was truly the little sister of the moon. So rich in understanding, so radiant in beauty, so timeless in wisdom, so powerful in rhythm, so musical of heart. She was soft warm brilliance rising out of quiet cool darkness, and joy stirred at each shimmering passage of her silver imminence through his dark sky.