Four weeks has the month. Four seasons has the year. In...

Four weeks has the month. Four seasons has the year. In chronobiology, circadian rhythms regulate our day-to-day, our twenty-four-hour waking-sleeping cycles. Infradian rhythms guide the longer stretches—hibernation, molting, mating, menstruation. “Everything has become speeded up and overcrowded,” wrote May Sarton in her journal in 1972. “So anything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow cycles of nature is a help.” When you look up and see the moon—as dusty smudge in day or glowing any phase at night—does a brief stillness settle? A momentary slowing? A temporary lull between interior and exterior time?

“The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review with the Sturgeon Moon in August.