Regular moons are one moon

There's a new moon over my shoulder. Remember that song? Probably not - unless you are a country western music fan. The word and tune come to mind tonight as I note the passing of another new moon above a cover of high dense clouds. It couldn't be seen anyway because it is at the point where it does not reflect the sunlight toward the earth.
Calling it a new moon doesn't make sense to me. There is nothing new about it. It's as old as the earth and as regular in its orbits as anything can be. It is visible in the daytime sky as a white orb at its newest. It doesn't follow the same path each month around the earth, though. Once it might be visible above the treetops and another time hidden in them. I'm not a Mayan astronomer so I don't calculate the exact location nor time of my observations, nor am I a voyager dependent for accuracy of my route on the heavens. But I notice it where ever I am. There were no treetops to obscure it from my balcony view on Culebra. In Costa Rica the trees and backyard fence made me almost lean over backwards for a view. In Kenya at 0200 hours it guided me to the pit toilet in Hippo camp.
These are not views of new moons but moons in various stages of reflecting the sun in a night sky. Rolling up out of the Caribbean like an enormus yellow glass fishing float, I saw it when its orbit brought it closer to the earth than it had ever been in historic times and won't be again for centuries. Winding across Vancouver island on the highway the full moon appeared to set and rise again from behind each mountain. It is a beacon in the east when I drive home at sunset from the cabin on Tieton Lake. Near midnight it hung near Venus and Mercury the time I drove back from a stamp club rally in Ritzville. From a temporary bedroom on Camano Island the moon defiantly comes up in the north - so what if I have a skewed inner compass.
Mysterious as it is the moon is a part of the entire scheme of things of which I am a very tiny part. The reverence it held in the lives of ancients put it in legends and rituals and often governed annual activities. Just how far does its power reach? Our present science is more interested in exploring the body itself than the moon's physical powers but still a great deal is known of its origin and its physics. Tourist trips would be a possiblity if a landing field and stopover station would be built.
If the opportunity offered itself, I would take the trip in a heartbeat.
Naomi Sherer