363 Night

In night’s vast ocean, Sun, moon, and earth align, Pulling the earth out of roundness And making tides rage. Such is the power of night.

Night. You are mother of all. You existed before all. You are the background, the fabric, the whole underpinning of the universe.

In you is abstruse mystery, darker than the deepest water, blacker than the sleep of sleeps. You are an inconceivable fer-tility, a wild and uncontrollable realm from which strangeness and power and creativity and mutation and life spring. The miracle of birth comes from you. And the horror of death. That is why you both comfort and frighten us.

Stars and planets are scattered through you like luminescent pearls. You string them on your current effortlessly, and the pull of syzygy is so tremendous that the birth shape of the earth is pulled out of roundness, the seas exceed their brims, and the heads and hearts of all the creatures on this planet are made to pound and wonder in dazzled confusion.

When stars and novas burst, energy untold is unleashed— explosions of such magnitude that human intellect and instruments could never hope to measure even if made superior by a hundredfold-and yet these flames burn out, sputter, become mere dim coals in the supreme expanse that is night.

Night. You are mother without a mother. You are mystery and power and ruler of all time.