Reading comfortably, cat on my lap, I was too lazy tonight to close the living room blinds, and so I looked out around 8:30 to see the moon just about full–or fully full? Clear sky after days of rain and slipped white clouds behind it, the kind that take on a shade close to brick just where the darkness resumes, and then a thin strip of gray cloud–steel gray, or darker–that seems to cross the moon itself.
Nothing happens, just a little movement, a little more, and still, it’s fascinating. The moon is cupped in the frilly, still-bare branches of my neighbor’s tree–willow? poplar? elm? I’ll have to ask her. Something light, and this is the upper twigs (we’re talking, after all, about the moon) and still, somehow, black lace against a deep blue sky, the spindly upper branches seem ready to take its weight if needed. The neighbor is a friend, a colleague, a person whose company I enjoy, one who has offered comfort in a time of terrible grief–she seems, in short, like the sort of person whose front yard tree would support the moon’s weight, and more.
And then the moon rises further, the clouds slip south, and the sky behind the moon is like the deep blue velvet of my mother’s first formal dress, one I could never really fit into properly, but loved.
And then I turn away from the window to help my daughter with her Spanish homework. When I look back, the moon is entirely gone, the sky is black: we live on a planet with neither moon nor stars. Perhaps the eternal darkness has begun.
But the cat is still stretched out on my lap, one leg extended languidly across my shin, a hind paw desultorily raised, tail lost under my book. He must weigh twelve pounds by now, maybe more. My legs, resting on a hassock, are starting to go numb.
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| Cheating? This is the moon from my apartment in Rosario. But it is the moon, and I did take the picture. |
The moon might return. There’s a near glow to the puff of cloud just beyond the neighbor’s tree. We had hail today (heavy, like someone in the sky pouring out a spent beanbag chair, shaking the white pellets down with a vengeance) and sunshine (enough for a good run) and more hail, a little wind. There’s no reason to think, after dark, the weather will hold still until morning. So the moon might be back; later, it might be bright enough, outside, to read.
This isn’t a story. But it might be where a story begins.
2 responses to “Howling”
Well, I’m ready to keep reading whichever story this moony post turns into. If it does. I especially like your neighbor being dependable enough to have a tree that could support the moon. There’s the heart of your story. Maybe.
(The moon should be full tonight, by the way; the first night of Passover always coincides with a full moon.)
Passover, of course– I might have checked the calendar, but then I would have had to dislodge the cat, my great excuse for sloth and musing.
You have a knack for finding the center of a (possible) story.