Today, the day of the new moon in my time zone (tomorrow EST), is the day to read The Night Traveler if you’re following Mary Oliver’s Twelve Moons as a lunar calendar with me. More than likely, this is a particularly appropriate poem for me today, as I’ll likely still be traveling from Fairbanks to Haines on the Alcan and Haines Highways. Although, if all is going to plan, we won’t be traveling at night.
When I began planning my packing for the trip, I realized that I’d likely be away for at least one of the moon phases. I didn’t really want to pack my copy of Twelve Moons to cover the possibility that I’d be on the road today, so I decided to copy the poem out longhand, and put it in my Franklin Planner.
That proved to be a pleasant exercise. Copying a poem by hand is not the optimal way to appreciate a poem, I suppose, but I know this poem already, so it became a kind of in-depth examination, as I focused on each word. I sat at the table in the morning dark; the cabin was almost silent, save for the quiet gliding of my pen on paper, and the comforting burble of the coffee maker on the propane stove. For the moment, it was just Mary and me, the small creature of the poem (a puppy?) and The Night Traveler himself.