Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Beneath the Blood Moon


It hung there in the sky, just above the palo verde tree. A silence pervaded the yard before a dog barked nervously too near. No dog lives so close.

The gravel was cold on my bare feet, hard and sharp. I stood in my underwear with my crappy camera and looked at the blood moon.



Why I was up I can't exactly say. I just was.

Something pulled me out of bed. Bad dreams maybe. Good dreams probably.

It seems like these moments come too few and far between, so I grab them when I can, when the responsible side of me is sleeping. That guy is a good man, the part of me that tries to be a good father, worker, husband. But other parts of me get tired of, as Stanley Kunitz says in "The Long Boat," "all that caring."

It's not that this part of me doesn't care, it just cares about wilder desires -- alll of the things I have put off -- art, writing, music, bike racing, travel, late nights.

He is here now, under this blood moon, looking at the impossible roundness of that floating, dry marble up there. It is suspended; we are all suspended, up and out here in space. This dusty planet has a thin layer of breathable air, a little water to drink, some soil that grows food. It's nothing short of the most valuable of gems, of the least likely jackpot of a galactic lottery.

It's cold in my underwear. Time to go back inside and dream the dream of days when I might join in the race. But for now, I have taken on duties that I will complete. I gave my word.

But it is good to know that a wild world is waiting when the time comes, when the moon quiets a dog barking a bit too close, and a silence sits on the yard like a beckoning lover.

She lifts a blanket and calls me home when the moon is red and responsibility sleeps.


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