After two days of high arid heat, the humidity has returned; today’s haze is not only from the smoke drifting in from the western horizon. Rain is forecast once more for Wednesday, although whether it materializes remains an open question. We did have cloudy skies last night, as we have had on so many recently — a veil sufficiently opaque to obscure most of the moon’s glow and all that of the stars, to say nothing of any meteor shower that might otherwise have shown us its beauty and power.
The full moon is now several days behind us, and yet, two nights ago, moonrise looked very nearly like that above. It was a waning moon, of course, but season and angle of moon to earth mean that the darkened portion rests at its base now, at least during its ascent. Once it cleared the ridgeline, it was obvious that it was no longer full, but until that moment, it looked like the same outsized glowing orb Wings captured in the image above, and glowing just as golden in a night air already more autumn than summer.
Even waning, even partially obscured by clouds, the moon remains our cosmic night light. On nights when its glow is invisible to us, the dark is deep indeed.
Such was the case for much of last night: The sky as a whole was lightened somewhat by the distant reflection of the town’s lights against the clouds, yet the darkness felt all-encompassing, deep and impenetrable. We take the presence of moon and stars so much for granted that their absence becomes disorienting. The ability to see one’s hand before one’s face does not, in itself, tell us which way to walk; it is the cold cosmic fire of distant beings that shows us how to navigate the night.
Tonight, the visible face of our grandmother will be smaller yet; she does not turn her back on us so much as turn her attention elsewhere it is needed for the good of all. Indeed, if the thin clouds now scattered to the four corners of the sky continue to coalesce, we not see her face at all, yet we know she is there, a cosmic touchstone like her counterparts of dawn and day.
Even on the darkest nights, that knowledge is enough to help us find our way.
~ Aji
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