Lightning and the Moon

There it goes, the moon was a ghostly galleon again, tossed upon cloudy seas at three o’clock this morning. The moon is full, and I didn’t take those pics,

pinched ‘em online, but it’s lighting my world, including my eight front steps sufficient that my usual extra caution isn’t necessary. A super moon, directly opposite the sun vis a vis the earth, bright, brighter, at its brightest.

No PCNH yet: there’s the temptation to sit on the downstairs front screen porch to watch or wait for it, but the competition for my presence is tough and air conditioned space takes the prize. For the moment.

Who doesn’t wonder at times what they can see of what’s going on down here. Can they see this moon? They, soon enough to be we, that is, with no mary maudlin intended. Leithauser tells life as I see it now, not like riding the moors with Noyes and his highwayman grieving Bess. We have our own griefs and loves and joys. Or even as AlfredDW saw it: this is his house, and the same super moon that he saw his century ago, I wonder if he sees it here with me this morning, what’s the truth of all that -- hope -- ? Or dread. When you get here, you ask.

In “Crest and Carpet” Leithauser says

and I wonder of you on your mountain Just

what can it be like, how must

you be feeling, as you watch friends

and family busily go about

their ever more distant errands?

Porch now. Muggy and there’s lightning in the south sky, over the Gulf of Mexico: can he, they, we enjoy the storm from Leithauser’s Crest? Or even ride in it. I’m hoping not.

Huge lightning too distant to hear its thunder.

No, there it is. Faint. A summer afternoon thunderstorm that forgot to look at the clock and may not even come ashore.