The Strawberry Moon

These prose-poems are a meditation on the human spirit, the natural world, and mystical enlightenment. The author s related works are: The Silence of Blackberries The Simultaneous Mountain: Essays on Poetry and Mysticism The Dancing Dragon Poems Twofold Consciousness: Poetry and Essays on Mysticism Letters to Buddha Native Americans named the first full moon of the month after the primary characteristic of that month. Strawberries are the earliest fruit to ripen, thus the name of the moon. On June 20, 2016, the summer solstice and the full moon coincided, the first time that has happened since 1948. In England, the strawberry moon is called the rose moon. In China, it s called the lotus moon. I think the only odd word used in the paragraphs is noumenon (including the forms noumena and noumenal ) which points to a physical reality beyond our five senses, experientially unknowable though comprehendible rationally. I often use the word as a synonym for the reality experienced during enlightenment. This definition is from The New Oxford American Dictionary: noumenon in Kantian philosophy, a thing as it is in itself, as distinct from a thing as it is knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes. A brief explanation might be necessary for my viewpoint on the human psyche: 1) the bodily self with its memories and intentional states; 2) consciousness of phenomena, shared by degrees with all animate life; 3) self-consciousness and the symbolic representation of reality unique to us as human beings; and 4) pure consciousness, which is the mental capability for experiencing the noumena of reality.