LA LUNE

An ode to mother moon.

The moon she is
And all she sees
Are the endless trials of humanity

Her opinion was not sought
And so she's found
That she cannot turn her head around

Despite watching our trials
Mouth screaming open wide
She's seen fit to bless us with changing tides

Every month
When it's her time
For reasons unknown, she causes crime

And despite this
With composed good grace
She's let Americans walk all over her face

She is our celestial satellite number one
And a better mother?
There is none

Historical note (kind of)

If you were curious about the line about causing crime, it’s true. Police departments the world over report a noticeable uptick in the crime rate on a full moon, and this is something that’s consistently referenced in historical primary sources too.

This is also where we get the terms “lunatic” and “lunacy” from, derived from the Latin word “lunaticus” which means “of the moon” or “moonstruck”

As to why the moon affects us this way, there are many theories but no real consensus. The lamest theory is just that the full moon serves to provide better illumination for committing crime, a theory rendered somewhat useless in this day and age, where we have so much artificial illumination for our settlements that the light pollutes the night’s sky.

A somewhat less lame theory is that the moon’s gravitational pull causes “human tidal waves”, dragging the fragile water-filled sacks we use as bodies into a frenzy.

In the mien of whack killjoy scientists everywhere, there are also several quantitative (a word so actively boring I felt turned off just typing it) that dispute this bit of popular lore, but I’m going to choose to continue to believe that mother moon and her warping of space-time (aka gravity) turns us all a bit feral every so often.

In case you’d like to read more about the Lunar effect, I’ve put some further reading links below for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_effect

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jun/07/ukcrime.aidaedemariam

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1444800/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047235210000589

https://nsrf.ie/wp-content/uploads/journals/09/Relationship_lunarPhases&seriousCrimesofBattery.pdf