The Night Orchestra

Written by: Maya Sugar

Illustration by: Tate Martinson

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The Moon would perch herself in the sky,

Poised and prepared to conduct an orchestra of nightly howls.

Whether she were a full, placid face or a wilting,

Withering convex, the lunar body would loom high above her earthly instruments. 

They would watch her form emerge from the horizon 

And she would prepare to usher them into another night of nocturnal hymns. 

A pale glow would climb the sky like a flare,

It signaled for the choir of the night to awaken, and join her in another performance. 

Coyote’s warmed their vocal chords

With the wolves in a raucous, soprano harmony. 

There was a single wind instrument

That would whistle and rustle through the tree’s leaves. 

A house sighed and settled for the performance. 

Soon after, the pawsteps of a scuttling, 

Red-eyed creature would trace the bare shingles like taps on a snare. 

Onlookers would watch The Crawling Moon,

Her entire celestial body became a baton. 

Her gentle movement conveyed a language 

That only her ensemble could understand –and yet, 

The Onlookers continued to look on, mesmerized. 

She would be reflected in the wonderbound eyes of children. 

The incomplete halves of foregone couples 

Would yearn for her solace when they were alone. 

Atrocity curators and their missing prey 

Would seek her guiding light in the darkness. 

Alchemists would use telescopes 

To investigate her face for men as strange as themselves. 

The Moon directed her nightly symphonies 

For her audience of Onlookers that hadn’t had ears for her. 

There were no children who learned to soulfully sing along with her coyote choir. 

There were no couples who danced to the whirring whistle of the wind. 

Where were the missing, if they were not led home by the heartbeat of her snares? 

Why bother to scour her skin for moonmen when the stratified truth 

Stayed, forever woven within the fibers of her every performance? 

Cement sound breakers had manifested 

From her would-be-listeners palms.

They rose one day without her noticing,

She thought that they served to construct her melodies.

They traded her tunes for metropolises 

And pressed her instruments into the corners of The Earth. 

She couldn’t understand why unmuffled cars ripped through 

Her delicate concords at the witching hour. 

She couldn’t combat the untired cities 

That raged against her soothing songs. 

She didn’t want to be the subject of wandering eyes 

And wondering nightminds. 

She only wanted to gently present them to slumber. 

The body that rose to ordain the twilight orchestra 

Had instead become a playground 

Solely for the idle man’s scrutiny and wish making. 

She would weep through every waxing performance 

And sigh through every waning bow. 

She desperately wanted an audience that could recognize 

Her tune through the heavy buzz of their own neon lights.

But there never seemed to be one. 

The Moon and The Earth had never stared upon one another, 

But The Earth had felt the low hum that teemed from the nightly orchestra. 

She could hear The Moon’s faint weeping

As she conducted her instruments.

They existed among The Earth’s decaying skin. 

Her body had become warped with civilization and time, 

But the sounds from her oldest life hadn’t dimmed yet. 

Instead, they existed as medicine; 

The last testament to her former glory. 

So, The Earth waited every dusk for The Moon’s Night Orchestra 

To rise and sing her softly to sleep, again.