'Yellow Moon' was a poem. My wife at the time, Joel - she's dead

Host: The night air was thick with the scent of jasmine and rain-soaked pavement. A pale yellow moon hung low above the old porch, suspended in a sky that seemed too wide, too silent, too full of memory. The faint hum of a record player drifted through the open window, a soft rhythm of some forgotten blues song.

Jack sat on the porch steps, his cigarette glowing faintly like a small dying star. Beside him, Jeeny held a chipped mug of tea, her fingers tracing the rim as if feeling for meaning in the smooth, cool ceramic.

The world around them was slow, the kind of night where even the wind hesitates — where grief breathes gently and time feels like it’s waiting for something to be said.

Jeeny: “Aaron Neville once said, ‘Yellow Moon was a poem. My wife at the time, Joel — she’s dead now — it was our 25th anniversary. She had the chance to go on a cruise with her sister. And I’m home with the kids and looking up, and I saw the big moon, and I just started writing.’”

She looked up, her eyes catching the same moon, heavy and gold. “Do you ever think a moment of loneliness could become something beautiful, Jack?”

Jack: (quietly) “Loneliness doesn’t create beauty, Jeeny. It just digs holes in you. People romanticize it because they can’t stand the silence. Neville wrote that song to fill the space his wife left — not to celebrate it.”

Host: The cigarette smoke curled into the moonlight, fragile, silver, vanishing. The crickets hummed, steady and low.

Jeeny: “Maybe. But I think what he wrote wasn’t about loss — it was about presence. He looked up at the moon and saw her there, even when she was gone. That’s not filling emptiness — that’s transforming it.”

Jack: (shaking his head) “You make it sound like grief is art. It’s not. It’s just the cost of love. You can’t turn it into a song and call it meaning.”

Jeeny: “But that’s what we’ve always done, isn’t it? Every love, every death — we’ve tried to turn it into something we can bear. Art isn’t denial, Jack. It’s translation. Neville wasn’t escaping his pain — he was decoding it.”

Host: A car passed in the distance, its headlights briefly washing the porch in pale light, then vanishing again into the night. Jack took a long drag, his eyes fixed on the dark outline of the trees.

Jack: “And yet, she’s still dead, Jeeny. The song didn’t bring her back.”

Jeeny: “No. But maybe it kept her from disappearing completely. Memory fades, but a poem — a song — it holds her voice, her shadow, her reflection in the moonlight. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do? Keep someone alive in language?”

Host: The words lingered between them, soft and heavy. The moonlight painted their faces — Jack’s lined with quiet fatigue, Jeeny’s glowing with a fragile kind of conviction.

Jack: “You sound like you’ve written your own ‘Yellow Moon’ before.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “Maybe I have. Not with paper or pen — but with moments. Every time I cook something my father used to love, or walk where my mother once walked — that’s my poem. It’s just written in motion.”

Jack: “So you believe grief can be beautiful?”

Jeeny: “I believe grief can be honest. And honesty is always beautiful, even when it hurts.”

Host: The porch light flickered. Somewhere, a dog barked, the sound distant, swallowed by night. Jeeny set her mug down on the step, steam rising faintly from it like the soul of something leaving quietly.

Jack: “You know, I used to write. A long time ago. Before I started working in construction. Wrote about stars, rivers, even people I barely knew. Then life happened. Bills, responsibilities. Poetry doesn’t pay rent.”

Jeeny: “But it keeps you human.”

Jack: (bitter laugh) “Does it? Or does it just make you soft?”

Jeeny: “Softness isn’t weakness. Neville didn’t write ‘Yellow Moon’ because he was weak — he wrote it because he felt. The world doesn’t need more strength, Jack. It needs men who can look at the moon and remember love instead of losing it.”

Host: Her voice trembled slightly on the last word, like a chord stretched too tight. Jack looked at her — really looked — and something softened behind his grey eyes.

Jack: “You think he wrote it for her — or for himself?”

Jeeny: “Both. Love always writes for two, even when only one is left.”

Host: The wind shifted, carrying the smell of wet earth and orange blossoms. The moonlight grew brighter, spilling like liquid gold across the porch, across their faces, across the quiet wounds they carried.

Jack: “You know, my mother used to listen to that song. I never understood why she’d cry every time it came on. She’d just stare out the window and hum along.”

Jeeny: “Maybe she saw her own moon in it.”

Jack: “Maybe she did. Maybe I do too now.”

Host: He exhaled slowly, a thin trail of smoke rising and disappearing into the night. The yellow moon hung steady above them, watching — old, silent, eternal.

Jeeny: “It’s strange, isn’t it? That something as distant as the moon can feel so personal. That one man’s grief can travel through melody and reach strangers decades later.”

Jack: “That’s the curse of artists. They bleed so the rest of us can feel.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe it’s their gift. They remind us that we still can.”

Host: The record inside clicked to an end, the silence it left behind more profound than the music. For a while, neither spoke. The world seemed to hold its breath.

Jack: “You think love survives like that? In songs, poems…?”

Jeeny: “If it didn’t, we wouldn’t keep singing.”

Jack: “And what about the ones who never wrote anything?”

Jeeny: “Their love survives in those who remember them. Even silence is a kind of music if you listen closely.”

Host: The clock struck midnight. The sound was distant, hollow — like an echo across water. The yellow moon was higher now, glowing fiercely through thin clouds, a witness to both sorrow and grace.

Jack: “So maybe the poem wasn’t about loss after all.”

Jeeny: “No. Maybe it was about staying — even when everything else leaves.”

Host: Jack stubbed out his cigarette, watching the ember die. Then, almost unconsciously, he looked up at the sky — the same way Aaron Neville once did. The same moon, the same quiet ache.

Jack: “You ever think we all have our own yellow moon? Something — or someone — that never really goes away?”

Jeeny: “I think we do. The trick is learning to look up.”

Host: The two sat there, side by side, no words left to trade. The moonlight brushed their faces like memory’s softest hand, and the night — vast, forgiving — seemed to hum with an invisible song.

And in that stillness, beneath the gaze of the yellow moon, love — quiet, enduring, infinite — began to speak again.