A Luna Reverie

A Nocturnal Meditation in the Passenger Seat

Homeward I rode as a passenger beneath the cool breath of night, the road winding through hills that once echoed with the tread of wolves. Beyond the misted glass, Luna kept her silent vigil—waning now, yet undiminished in grace. She drifted in and out of veiling clouds, a tenebrous icon of the Morning Star, half-seen, cloaked in incense and candle smoke, her ethereal light falling upon the serpentine road, like the Virgin’s heel upon the head of the primeval serpent.

Immacolata Concezione
by Bernardo Cavallino

I thought of my forebears—the Hirpini, wolf-men of the Campanian Apennines—who knew these same stars, who prayed to older gods before the Cross rose over the Neapolitan hinterlands. Yet even they, I thought, might have bowed their heads beneath such a sky, where the ancient and the eternal commingle.

Luna, mirror of the Sun Divine, thou art the Virgin’s own emblem—chaste and shining not by thine own power, but by reflection of the greater Light. In thee Mary’s mystery abides: the gentle intercessor who gathers the radiance of Christ and pours it upon the darkened earth. As the moon waxes and wanes, so too does mortal life—death yielding to rebirth, shadow yielding to dawn.

Through the windshield’s dim reflection, I beheld her face once more, veiled and unveiled by the coursing clouds. And in that vision there stirred both memory and longing: for the mountains of my progenitors, for the faith that outlives the flesh, for the wild howl of the spirit still running through my veins and echoing through the valleys of Irpinia.

O Luna benigna, pale shepherdess of souls, guide us through the night’s uncertainty. Shine upon the road that leads us home, and keep thy radiant heel upon the coiling dark—until the Sun of the Resurrection breaks anew upon the hills.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 6th, Feast or San Leonardo di Noblac