Leafing through a book of photographs taken from space, I turn to the pictures of the Moon. I who am from the desert have never seen images of a desert so stark, of so uniform a gray-white. Our only relations that make up the Moon are our brothers the minerals, our sisters the stones; but, where is the iron to give a hint of a blush to those precipitous craters, the copper to give a touch of blue-green to those vast and arid seas, the sulfur to give a tinge of yellow to those desolate plains, that fantasy desert the color of ash?

Even the suits of the space-divers are of that same silver-gray as they trudge on the virgin ground leaving their colorless tracks, the only speck of color the red and the blue on the little remnant of cloth they carry to stake claim for their sect to that gray territory of the moon.

Turning the page I am astounded by an image of an Earth-rise over the curved horizon of the Moon, a great gem of turquoise and jade, lapis lazuli, pearl, carnelian, rounded in its tumbling in the currents of space. The Himalayas, the Andes flattened, the continents blurred by the delicate veil of the terrestrial atmosphere, there are no borders. It is a whole and it is very small, very fragile against the total velvet-black.

The sounds of the wars that rage on the Earth are not heard, the cries of the wounded, of the mothers bereft. Nor are the shouts, the songs of weddings and carnivals. Those are only ours. Ours is the wounding of the Earth. The moon has no water for tears.

Closing the book, I look up to the full Moon in my window. She is more beautiful from this distance, I think, and hers is the beauty of mirrors, a beauty determined by the light they reflect. She lights the night with her desolate face and is loved because she is witness. Poor Moon, there are no rainbows there; her huge longing disturbs all that holds water on the Earth, and we love her in great measure for the disquiet she causes in our blood.



Rafael Jesús González was born in the bicultural/bilingual setting of the El Paso/Juárez area and attended the University of Texas at El Paso, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, & the University of Oregon. Professor of Creative Writing & Literature, he has taught at the University of Oregon, Western State University of Colorado, Central Washington State University, the University of Texas at El Paso, and Laney College, Oakland (where he founded the Mexican and Latin American Studies Dept.) He has also taught in the grade schools under Poets in the Classroom. His poetry and scholarly articles appear in reviews & anthologies in the U.S., Mexico & abroad; his collection of verse El Hacedor De Juegos/The Maker of Games published by Casa Editorial, San Francisco, went into a second printing. He has thrice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Also a visual artist, his work has been exhibited at the Oakland Museum of California; the Mexican Museum of San Francisco; the Charles Allis Art Museum, Milwaukee; & others in the U.S., Mexico, and abroad. He was Poet in Residence at the Oakland Museum of California and the Oakland Public Library under the Poets & Writers "Writers on Site" award in 1996 and was selected for the Annual Dragonfly Press Award for Literary Achievement in 2002. He is on the Board of Directors for the University of Creation Spirituality/Naropa University, Oakland; on the Latino Advisory Committee of the Oakland Museum of California; and on the Alameda County Office of Education Arts Advisory Board.
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