The Moon, “like to a silver bow” (Shakespeare), “sole in the blue night” (E. E. Cummings), with its “face like the clock in the hall” (Robert Louis Stevenson), has inspired poetry for centuries. Now a new book by science writer Rebecca Boyle offers a surprising entry into the lunar canon. Our Moon does certainly convey a great deal of science and history about the Earth’s Moon, but the dominant impression it leaves is one of dream-like wonder, more akin to poetry than a dry work of popular non-fiction.
The lyrical prose feels like a lullaby, offering a space for reflection on just how intertwined humanity is with the Moon and prompting its reader to ponder their own relationship with our nearest celestial neighbour. “The Moon says nothing for itself, but it says plenty about us,” writes Boyle. “We project our dreams and our fervour onto its mottled surface, and it serves as a mirror, both figuratively and literally.”
The Moon is quite literally in our creation – much of Earth’s life (ourselves included) has evolved to be diurnal, waking and resting on a clock determined by the Sun, but our patterns are also dictated by the Moon. “Corals time their mating dance according to the full Moon’s appearance,” Boyle writes. Meanwhile, “because gnats must wait for an extremely low tide to keep their eggs safe, they evolved the ability to notice the Moon’s phases.” Our own species’ menstrual cycles (28 days on average) coincidentally line up quite well with the time it takes for the Moon to revolve through its phases (29.5 days).
Our relationship with the Moon is, of course, ongoing; it seems as if this current phase of our connection might be defined by the rise of private companies looking to ransack it for resources or claim a chunk as their territory. Boyle raises concerns about this possible future: “Who gets to decide the way to use a precious thing, a limited, special, spectral, spiritual thing, that we all share? ... No one person, no single culture, can speak for everyone who shares the sky.”
~ Briley Lewis ~
