Catch Jim’s 3-minute podcast at: https://youtu.be/Omp-4jwRlIw
or read the transcript below…
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Life, actually…
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THE DOWN-SOUTH MOON SEES YOU
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The full moon is suspended in a childhood southern sky. There it is, glowing like a buttermilk snowball just above the starry eastern horizon.
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It is seventy-five years ago in this deep south village, and tonight the heavens belong exclusively to eight-year-old Jimmy Three.
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Jimmy Three has the universe all to himself because he is the only kid in sight who is lying flat on his back on an old handmade quilt spread upon dewy grass.
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For this moment, Jimmy Three is just another imagination floating in the ether, allowing his dreams to guide him.
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He squints at the creamy moon and starts to form questions.
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How is it that he can hide the entire orb behind his tiny thumb? It doesn’t make sense. He learns in school that the moon is thousands of miles big. He know that he is a mere handful of inches in height, his thumb smaller still.
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So how can the moon be so easily obliterated at his personal leisure?
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Does this phenomenon occur only in Alabama skies, or is he becoming aware that any kid anywhere on the planet can mimic his inquiry? Can kids everywhere experience the firmament, observing all the wonders that adults have long ago given up?
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Will Jimmy Three one day forget about the miracles just above his head? Will life become such a full-time distraction that he forgets to dream?
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Is wonderment over when he rolls up the quilt and sleepily heads toward home? Will activities of daily living turn him into an almost-aware ghostly figure?
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Will Jimmy Three grow elderly and wizened and put-upon by responsibility as the years race forward?
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Or can Jimmy Three find a way to privately re-visit his quilty glowing dewy moments of childhood, when all that matters for a few minutes is the gossamer fact that the heavens and Jimmy Three are close friends?
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Will the heavens recall Jimmy Three’s pleasure, or will Jimmy Three take his memories away with him to a private and starry haven that nobody else, nothing else, can access?
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As a village elder Jimmy Three to this day loves questions like these, questions that you can answer any way you like, because they exist beyond science, beyond reality. But never beyond memory
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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed
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