Skystruck

I remember stars and moon and planets. Inky sky. Satellites tracking. But only on a cove in North Carolina, and on weekends at the Warrior River, and even sometimes in my own yard.

But those viewings were a long time ago. 

Childhood was a long time ago.

Not until I moved to Tennessee a little less than 15 years ago, to one tiny town and then another small one, did I truly see sky and skylights again.

Now I seek them out.

(Note to self: avoid photo forays in frigid temperatures. No wonder my fingers hurt, reddened, went numb. Bookmark this chart!)

Is it Halloween yet?

Praying mantis perched on the kitchen screen door,

head centered, silhouetted in the silver-white fat moon,

framed by leafless limbs. 

Where's Tim Burton when I need him?

Nightfall

Why turn on a lamp
when rising moon
illumines stained glass?

Everything

Universe
by Steven Schnur

Up beyond the
Night sky, an
Indigo darkness like
Velvet
Embraces the farthest
Reaches of the mind.
Sun, moon, stars,
Everything.

A Night Like This

"Forty-five years after astronauts landed on the moon, scientists say they have finally discovered its true shape: slightly flattened, with a bulge on one side.

"'Like a lemon with an equatorial bulge,' said Ian Garrick-Bethell, a planetary scientist at University of California, Santa Cruz, and an author of the study being published in the journal Nature. 'If you can imagine a water balloon flattening out as you spin it.'" (Douglas Quenqua, "The Moon Is (Slightly) Flat, Scientists Say", The New York Times, July 30, 2014)

*

Waxing gibbous on the eve of the summer supermoon.

*

Silvered natural satellite, a platter held in night's hand.

May I serve you?

Yes, please, and thank you.

*

Even bigger, even brighter tomorrow.

"Closer to the earth than it has been in over twenty years, stargazers will see a moon 14 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter than usual." ("Supermoon 2014: All You Need to Know about This Sunday's Supermoon," The Independent, 10 August 2014).

That's the promise.

*

But for now, tonight is more than enough.

Large Personalities

I
My friend J confessed that the worst part of rehab is the forced cheerfulness of the staff.

He and I agree: gossipy-southerny-chatty-condescendingly-cute women can make us want to eat nails or walk on glass or escape by any means necessary. 

These are large personalities without whom we can do.

Unfortunately, he must endure them, for now.

II
Driving to his home in Bell Buckle, his wife F and I, in our separate vehicles, encountered a fat orange moon rising over the village, like a beacon of hope and healing.

I wish he could have stood with me in his tree house, looking out at the distance.

This is a big personality in whose company we could both happily thrive.

Moon Splash

Tonight, the moon knifes through leafless branches, splashing flat white light on frozen ground and stars (really do) burn silver in a black sky. I walk outside, drawn by the light, brighter than dawn's this morning, and look up, the branches fingering sky, twisting in ghostly shadows like El Greco's flaming brush strokes.

Sewanee flames black, white, silver.

The Moon

The moon is octobering now -- huge when it rises and when it sets, a witching-bewitching heavenly orb that makes my early rising and commuting a singularly astral experience.