November 9: Open to winter

cold as the new moon

I write about Snowy Owls

wish it were that easy

Posted with Blogsy

June 30: End of June

The quality of light, the tone of a sultry summer evening...

Sky still light at 9.
Red Sox on the radio.
Slim new moon rising.

October 8: Direction

Stepped out last night to see if the aurora borealis visible in northern Maine was visible here. 

New moon moving west

all afternoon, and now

Big Dipper points north.

December 12: Night sky

In the backyard tonight braving the cold for a few minutes in hope of seeing some of the Geminid meteor shower. Clear sky on a new moon night, perfect for star-gazing. This pattern of constellations is the same one I first learned as a child studying the stars with a well-thumbed Golden Book--for me, the night sky's most familiar face. Over the roof peak poise the two stars of Gemini, Castor and Pollux; Orion climbs the sky beyond my neighbor's garden; Auriga, the Charioteer, pauses high over Mount Battie; the V of Taurus the Bull sits just below the blurred cluster of the Pleiades. And almost inside that V, bright Jupiter.

With binoculars, I can see three of Jupiter's four Galilean moons--the largest and brightest satellites of our largest planet--as well as the true redness of Aldebaran, the alpha star of Taurus. I don't expect to last long enough to see an actual meteor. But as I shiver and the cloud of my breath rises to the heavens, a quick falling star flashes behind a net of birch branches. I say "Thank you!" to the sky before rushing back into the warm house.

No need to make a wish.
This sky, these stars--
all I want right now.

November 14: Lights out

Leaving a friend's studio tonight, the porch light was out. And the two streetlights facing her building were out. With the new moon, the street seemed profoundly dark. It wasn't until I got to my car that I could see the sky was clear and starry above the roofs, and there, right above my car, shining Jupiter.

Night street so dark
only a planet shines,
too distant to light my way.

November 13: New Moon

The new moon must be exerting its dark power on this bleak afternoon, when energy ebbs and dusk falls long before the work day's ended. Satisfied with what I got accomplished today and buoyed by rich chocolate pound cake from Megunticook Market, my own spirits are high despite the weather. But I look out the window and think of a friend who's going through a rough time right now in a relationship, and can well imagine how this landscape must seem to echo her mood.

Rain, tangled branches.
A heartsick woman
holds in her tears.

June 18: New Moon

At an inexplicable low point in the biorhythms cycle today. Maybe I can blame it on tomorrow's new moon. But when I returned home, my day was salvaged by the explosion of fragrant peonies in my garden and the call of a loon in the distance, wending its way upriver back to the nest for the night.

Impending new moon.
If not for these peonies,
I'd own that darkness.

December 22: Long, dark night

Winter Solstice: the shortest day of the year. From here on out, light will linger a little longer each afternoon. But tonight is the longest night, and it's going to be a dark one. Already the few stars still visible are hazy behind a sheen of clouds. And the moon is just over 4% full--for all practical purposes, a new moon. This plunge into the depths of darkness will make it that much more joyful to emerge into the light tomorrow, with perhaps a little snowfall to really boost our holiday spirits.

The year's longest night,
cold and dark too. Come closer,
honey. Warm me up.

November 27: Breakwater, High Tide, New Moon

The title sums it up. My husband and I decided to take advantage of both a rare, work-free Sunday and relatively mild weather by getting out for a morning walk together. Our destination: the Rockland Breakwater. However, we weren't really thinking about the fact that high tide during what can still be considered the new moon might make walking the mile-long granite jetty a challenge. With about an hour still to go till full high tide, the end of the breakwater just before the lighthouse was already underwater, stranding the lighthouse as its own little island in the middle of outer Rockland Harbor. Strong winds also complicated the situation, pushing waves up over the ocean-facing side of the breakwater even at its beginning, where the wall is highest. We walked out a short distance, dodging spray, but when waves began to spread across the entire width of the wall, we decided to turn around. We weren't the only ones. The weather wasn't quite warm enough for anyone to want to risk being soaked in icy sea water, or worse, stranded on the wrong end of a flooded sea wall.

New moon, high tide, full
harbor, brimming breakwater.
We skirt the edges.

October 28: Slender Moon

I spent my day in a leadership class at Cellardoor Winery in Lincolnville, its renovated new space (what used to be an old farmhouse attached to a barn) a beautiful venue for a group get-together. We enjoyed views of a mountain in the distance (Levenseller?), lingering foliage of orange and gold, the vineyard's neat rows, vast mown fields, a pond, and a rainbow-colored line-up of Adirondack chairs. After our day's class, we then partook in a delicious wine-food pairing. At one point in the tasting session, someone from the winery mentioned "body-to-body pairing," in which you combine a complex wine with a complex food to bring out the best in each. I like that phrase for many reasons and left thinking that was somehow going to be the subject of today's haiku.

This is what I was going to write about...

But then as I was driving home past Megunticook Lake at dusk, I happened to glance to my right, across the calm water of the lake. The lake's surface was so calm, and the day so cold, that I had to remind myself that I wasn't looking at ice. Beyond the still water, blue and deep, rose the dark form of Bald Mountain, with just one house lit up in its center like a welcoming lantern. And above the mountain's smooth shape hung the slimmest slender crescent of the brand-new moon. If there had been a place to stop and pull over, I would have done so. Instead, I admired the simple, iconic beauty of the scene as best I could without driving off the road (lake on one side, mountain on the other). I'm a sucker for the moon. At least half of our artwork includes the moon in some form. So I guess it's no surprise that even after spending my day looking out on the idyllic landscape of the vineyard, I'd be most inspired by the moon.

Dusk: new moon setting.
Barely there, this slim crescent
trumps the fall vineyard.

August 9: New Moon

No, I'm not referring to Stephenie Meyer's vampire book. Tonight the Current Moon Phase gadget on my Google home page tells me that the moon is 0% full: a new moon. Although I guess technically if the new moon is the thin slice of moon filling up again tomorrow night, tonight is really "no moon." The lack of moonlight would make this a wonderful evening to check out the stars if it weren't cloudy.

The new moon, when the moon is a big black zero in the sky, happens once a month when the moon is in direct conjunction with the sun, meaning that the earth, moon, and sun are aligned in such a way that we see no sunlight reflecting off the moon. We're reminded that the moon's phases are all a trick of light and mirrors, that the dry moon itself gives off no light of its own. Our faithful satellite floats invisibly in the dark void until the earth and sun shift enough for us to see that sliver of reflected light again. Day by day the area of light grows--the moon waxes--until the full moon. Then it wanes till there's no moonlight at all--the new moon again. A lovely cycle, setting up a perfect metaphor of the cycle of life, birth and death, beginnings and endings.

Perhaps this is why in so many religious calendars around the world--Muslim, Hindi, Buddhist, and Jewish--a new month begin on either the day of the "no moon" or that of the brand-new moon, when that first crescent shines along the moon's rim. The Muslim month Ramadan, a deeply spiritual time of fasting each day from sunrise to sunset, begins with this new moon, for example. For Hindus, the new moon is Amavasya, an auspicious day, a time to pay respects to one's ancestors and make offerings. A new moon on Monday, the moon's day, like today, is particularly significant and various Hindu rituals are performed depending on where one lives. There's something I find particularly intriguing about celebrating the dark, a time when the moon disappears and we have only the stars left to guide us.

No light of its own,
new moon is no moon, blank disk
awaiting the sun.