The fiftieth Moon Prize Moon Prize on today's full moon goes to Jill Crainshaw's poem "long night moon."

NB—it is getting harder and harder to pick just one piece of writing from so many excellent ones I have the honor of posting each month. This one I just fell in love with and then stayed in love with.

long night moon

by Jill Crainshaw

i wonder

as i wander

if the owl that once in a blue moon sat

on the reformed church-eave next door

will weather a damp december eve

to wait with me and the tiny terrier for

the sleeping beauty of this solstice night

to lift her yellow-gold head up from

a wintry horizon to cast her spell

one more time upon weary waiting eyes

i wonder

as i wander

if the advent moon will whisper-sing

through vulnerable arms of unclothed trees

she who full and overflowing has

poured out light like wildflower

honey over purple mountaintops

and spilled silver tears onto

too-new burial places

i wonder

as i wander

if the owl will call out

across midwinter cedar tops—

in praise of star-fall and

long night moon

as the tiny terrier

throws her head back

and howls and howls

* * * * *

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She enjoys exploring how words give voice to unexpected ideas, insights and visions.