As the moon began its slow walk up the sky last night, on its way to that next storied meeting, I stood and stared with eyes and camera not up to the task of capturing any of what was afoot. Some of us here on earth had styled it a red moon, a blood moon even, and started rearranging our sleep schedules weeks ago to be present, awake, to see from afar, to wonder.
How one perfect orb could so readily intrigue we denizens of earth? That’s a mystery. We huddled beneath blankets, eyes trained on the sky, to see the shadow of our lonely planet blot out its own moon’s primary access to the sun for a spell: that’s all. Whispers attended the night, theories of people before us, before cameras, before telescopes. Given the prominence of that steely orb in our night skies, we agreed, no wonder we humans wax mythopoeic at eclipses. Most of us will never set foot on the moon, but on nights like this one? When our shadows pass before its face and it recedes—opalescent, hued in reds gone pearly near its edges? We can so easily imagine ourselves walking amongst the stars for good. Eternal emptiness touched by magic, storied somewhere far away by beings we know not.
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