the moon

At 6:30 I was driving east to pick Fi up from rehearsal. The moon appeared from behind bands of cloud. I watched as the curved shadow of the earth moved across the moon's bright face. The moon seemed to take up the whole of the sky in front of me. When a cloud ribbon obscured it for a minute or two, I kept glancing at the spot where I knew it was, until it reappeared.

At 6:45, the doors of the rehearsal space opened and performers streamed out. Most didn't notice but one or two stopped to look. Soon everyone was saying, "Look! The moon! Eclipse!" There it was again, a slim fingernail-clipping of a thing, just above the trees.

Driving up the hill the moon played hide and seek as we turned and twisted higher and higher. Fi and her friend sang silly songs as I gasped at glimpses of the fully-shrouded disc hanging low in the sky.

Back at the bottom we stopped at the drugstore. Teenage boys stood in a cluster at the strip mall, pointing, as the moon poked its pale orangey-brown face from behind an apartment tower. Shoppers stopped to talk to each other and point the way, "It's just there, beside the middle floor, the one that's all lit up."

Back at home, outside the dining room window, the moon nestles in the branches of the alder tree, slowly restoring itself.

Now, some time past 9:00. It's full again. Next time, December 2010.

Question: If you stand on the moon at a lunar eclipse, do you see the earth traveling across the sun?

mompoet - closer to the sky than you think