The ChompA serpent eats the Moon tonight. Because of where I am (and all that is happening above where I am, in between me and the moon) is it a little difficult to tell. If I were to spin a tale of it, I would claim that the shamans who served the tribes in this place many millennia ago were all careful, competent, and correct when those women and men pointed to the sky to fortell and demonstrate the latest wonder in the skies. I do not think any of their kin minded as they did this. Their kin had no doubts. It was just, with the sky that night as it is this one, no one really found it much to matter. I imagine the elders nodded sagely, clapped a rough hand on a back or two, and then they all went bowling.
I can't imagine how the astronomers around here take it.
And yet, sitting out on the porch (blankets are involved in this, this night), there are sometimes breaks in the smooth stream of cloud that rolls over us now. Occasional whispers of light sneak though, alien and dim, unrecognized as the moon. Some dour sister has taken station instead, beaming down not the bone blue of clear nights, but of other colors. There have been times tonight when holes in the clouds of slid past just right, and I've been able to look up, to see disc whole, but still covered with cloud, until I notice the cloud is not moving. Just when I recognize this, it all fades away into murk again.
In other places tonight, deserts perhaps, there are those who are lucky to see the whole thing unfurl from end to end, the smudge of colors slipping across the face up there like veils. Here: we only get glimpses of mystery, a coy glance, a wink, hard fought.
I'll take it.
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