Leaping and Hopping on a Moon Shadow...
Everyone talks about the sunrise, but not much is really ever said about the moonrise. And people who don’t live on such massive bodies of water like I do, Lake Michigan, also never get to experience the moon as it rises out of the waters.
There is a Frank O’Hara poem about Orion climbing into the night sky, I think.
So I brought my pen and paper, a chai tea, and I sit on a bench atop a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan: waiting for the moon to rise, or I guess, the moonrise.Your basic sensory experiences: sound of the waves below and seagulls above, the occasional car driving by, a fall-like nip in the air, and apparently I am on the flight-path tonight as an inbound Midwest Express flight just flew over. We haven’t had our first frost so there are clouds of gnats or something swarming around me.
I’m not the only one here. There’s an artist on the next bench south of me. He’s prepared to paint his experience on canvas. I’ll do my best with my camera. There’s a couple even further south sitting on a blanket in front of another bench.
I’m racking my astronomical mind, debating if the moon will rise more towards the north or south as I face east over the lake. While pondering that, I can’t help to think about funny guy on PBS who sits on the rings of Saturn and talks about the night sky. I bet he would have told me if I had watched his segment this week. What’s his name?
After my parents divorced, my dad lived close to where I am sitting right now. I remember after a big storm he would take my brother and I down to the lakefront in the middle of the night to watch the lightning over the lake. And during the day, when we would figure the wind to be just right, we would drive his old red truck down to the breakwater. There we would park and the waves would crash over us.
I could see a sliver of yellowish-orange (I guess, I’m color-blind) through the trees. I moved so I could get a clear view of it all. I stood there and watched it grow out of the water; a sailboat had a better view on the lake. A woman joined me, and we talked about both having heard about this particular full moon on NPR earlier in the day. She told me it was called Peroni or something “it starts with a P, I know that.” Isn’t peroni a type of beer? (I later researched it and discovered it’s actually ‘Perigee.’ Close enough. It’s the part of the moon’s orbit where it is closest to the earth. So it’s brighter and bigger-looking). I took some pictures. There’s no way they will turn out to any resemblance of what it really looks like.
We talked through the moonrise.
“Tomorrow night is supposed to be cloudy, so I thought I would come down tonight to see the moonrise” she said to me as she turned to leave. “Well I hope your pictures turn out”
Pictures only mimic moments so others can attempt to experience the same thing.
And…they really didn’t turn out:
posted by Steve-O @ 5:41 PM
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