I can't sleep…
Notes:
At night I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine.
Breathe into me.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, excerpt from “Some Kiss We Want” in A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings by Coleman Barks
Photo of full moon over Peyto Lake by Cath Simard. Peyto Lake is a glacier-fed lake in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. Don’t miss her other shots of Banff here.
“On Monday, 14 November, the moon will be the biggest and brightest it has been in more than 60 years. So long as the sky is clear of clouds, it should be a great time to get outside and gaze at it or take some photos…At 8:09PM GMT, the moon will pass by the Earth at a distance of 356,511km – the closest it has passed the Earth since 1948. As it does so, it will be a full moon, making it a particularly big supermoon. Supermooons are roughly 30% larger in area and 30% brighter than the smallest full moons – full moons that happen when the moon is at its furthest distance from Earth: at “apogee”. In terms of diameter – the width of the moon – it will be about 14% wider than the smallest full moons. (Read more at The Guardian: Supermoon science: November 2016 moon biggest and brightest in 60 years)
Art: Dark Hall Mansion
If you live to be very old, you may see twelve hundred full moons. Some come in winter and you trudge out into the deep snow to stand beneath their glow. Others come to you in the city and you take an elevator up to the roof of the highest building and set out a couple of folding chairs to watch it glide across the sky. Or the moon finds you along a foreign shore and you paddle out in some dingy and scoop its reflection from the waters and drink it down. The moons of your old age are the most potent but seem few and far between. They make their way into your marrow and teach it how to hum. When your final moon arrives, it’s as if youth has come back to you. Though instead of flaunting its yellow hat, now it’s dressed in black.
~ David Shumate, “An Inventory of Moons” from Kimonos in the Closet
Notes:
Like mine, the moon’s eyelid is droopy.
It too is old and has been around.
We pass our time together without saying a word,
like brothers scything weeds long after dark.
His scythe has caught a little light,
but mine has not.
We still have work ahead, as long as we can see.
~ Ted Kooser, “August.” The Wheeling Year: A Poet’s Field Book
Photo: r2–d2