Monthly

Dec 20 2019

Once again, the full moon

has caught me by surprise,

appearing, fully formed

in what had been a dark and empty void.

After a week of overcast.

After losing track of time,

which seems to pass faster and faster

as the years go by.

And after my usual habit

of walking head down,

lost in thought

walling-off the world.

No mystery to its occurrence, though;

monthly, like clockwork.

Its silver-blue glow

is even brighter on snow

shadows more sharply etched.

An unearthly light

that seems to flatten distance

and bleed out the reds,

as if we were extraterrestrials

under some alien star.

And if the circle is the ideal shape

as imagined by philosophers

then this moon is immaculate,

a celestial object

as worthy of worship

as Venus and Mars.

Looming large on the horizon, I watch it rise,

steadily ascending

with a slow majestic grace

that so simply conveys

the geometry of the cosmos,

the gravity

trajectory

and mass

that are its instruments.

And then, imagining the moon

as if it were fixed in place

I can feel the earth

slip into gear,

the sphere beneath my feet

wheeling through space.

But how odd

its extremes of size;

from a small coin, suspended high overhead

to this colossal orb

sitting just above the horizon,

Smaller and smaller, the higher it goes.

An optical illusion, we are told.

But if we cannot trust even our eyes

what can we trust?

Night has been transformed

turning to dusk.

And in another month

I will be surprised, once more.

Out here, we have a good night sky for viewing, and I can usually keep tabs on the moon's waxing and waning. But the full moon caught me by surprise the other day, walking well after dark as the clouds broke.

Especially with fresh snow on the ground, the intensity of its light always surprises me. And delights, me, of course. I initially wrote something like “silvery light”; you know, the usual cliche. But then actually looked it up, and Google informs me that the light is in fact heavily shifted toward blue: much more blue than silver. Which probably explains that cool, bloodless, unearthly quality it has.

We've all been fooled by the the optical illusion of the moon's size. Which is easily explained: you only notice how large it actually is when it's close enough to the ground that you can directly compare it to known objects; while higher up, the same-sized moon seems lost in the vastness of an empty sky.