Tonight there is supposed to be a Mega Moon, or a Super Moon, a full moon when it is at perigee so they say it will be 14% bigger and 33% brighter. Last night it already looked pretty big and since it was mostly clear it was shining right in the window. I lay there watching it fade in and out as the few clouds would speed across it. So, at least tonight I will have no trouble knowing where to look.
This has been a noisy morning, and what is strange is that I have been seeing gulls and terns this morning and hearing them as well, screeching as they fly in huge wheeling circles. Being so close to the bay you would think to see more of them, but it's unusual to seem them or hear them. The black headed terns, which look just like seagulls to me, and the lighter all over gray gulls were just having a ruckus and flying in what seemed to be aimless circles. A whole flock of the little sparrows or wrens made their happy noise in the crepe myrtle but moved off when the gulls were overhead. Somewhere the big woodpecker is looking for breakfast, digging holes with his head, making the rapid tap of that search. Altogether a very noisy morning!
This poem combines the moon, which will get a lot of attention tonight with everything ordinary, all those things we think will happen again, which don't, which only happen once and are unique, which is why I can look out my window every morning and see something only once.
Scraps of Moon
Scraps of moon
bobbing discarded on broken water
but sky-moon
complete, transcending
all violation
Here she seems to be talking to herself about
the shape of a life:
Only Once
All which, because it was
flame and song and granted us
joy, we thought we'd do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only; every invitation
did not begin
a series, a build-up: the marvelous
did not happen in our lives, our stories
are not drab with its absence: but don't
expect to return for more. Whatever more
there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body-halo of flames as utterly
present, as now or never.
Denise Levertov
Perhaps that's one of the things about growing older that I enjoy, the now or neverness of it. You begin to understand that each day is unique, each moment never to come again. You can think about that when you are younger, but it has little reality and mostly you are too busy to do it. But when you get "nearly old" you know the reality of it and it makes everything feel more important, even the tiny ordinary things of every day, sparrows, sunlight, trees, cats, squirrels. You begin to understand in reality there is no going back to do something over, that you only have ahead of you what will be unique and vital. The gulls this morning will not make their same circles next time I see them, but they will make new ones. The squirrel will not yell at the cat with quite the same sound, but he will yell all the same, perhaps for a different reason, if you could fathom the reasoning of a squirrel. Tonight when you see the mega moon, it will be a unique beauty, a now or never moment, as each single moment always is, a sight singular that will come around again, but will never be the same, a singular cause for joy!
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