Talk about perspective!
Imagine the perspective with which our ancestors viewed last night’s lunar eclipse! Not having the background of science and astronomy that we have to explain why the moon first starts to disappear and then turns red? How scary it must have been, especially if they had a shaman with a power complex:
” The moon is disappearing because you have doubted my power. If you do not change your ways, the moon will soon turn blood red.”
Did you see the eclipse this am? The full moon often wakes me up, especially if she is shining into our bedroom window. So when I woke up —BOOM —FULLY AWAKE — this morning at 4:15 and saw the moonlight through the curtains, I knew it was useless to try to get to sleep again. I had the alarm set for 5, anyway.
So I threw on a winter coat and hat and shuffled outside in my slippers to sit on the damn patio. Had a perfect view, too, before the moon slipped behind the trees. By that time she was fully eclipsed and perhaps shy about her nakedness.
A gentle wind blew the tree limbs in a soft sway, otherwise all was quiet.
Except for Buffy who couldn’t understand why I was sitting outside in the dark. Without her. I could have put her harness and leash on, but then I wouldn’t be able to watch the eclipse. I would, instead be straining my eyes to see what she was getting into. She watched the eclipse from the porch.
Here is the poem that I promised you yesterday. It is from a book called Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle and Other Modern Verse, and is copyrighted in 1966. It is well worn, with the binding serving only as a reminder and the separate pages looking like bookmarks. Post it notes adorn some pages, Asterisks in pencil, black cartridge ink and green ballpoint denote poems chosen for three different uses, secondary to elementary to readers’ theatre presentations. This book has been with me since long before i graduated high school. It is well loved.
It is an anthology whose separate pieces were brought together in the mid sixties by poets who could foresee the coming unrest of the late sixties. Perhaps they were beatnik poets, wearing black turtlenecks, tight black pants, and the required beret and goatee, reading their anti-establishment works in smoke filled coffeehouses.
Or maybe the editors were black gowned English Lit professors, stuck in their ivory towers, wishing for a little anarchy.
As Steve Martin would say, “” Naaaaaaaaah.”
All I know is that these poems helped me understand who I was and who I was becoming at a confusing time in my life.
Here it is:
Fueled
by Marcie Hans
Fueled
by a million
man-made
wings of fire—
the rocket tore a tunnel
through the sky —
and everybody cheered.
Fueled
only by a thought from God —
the seedling
urged its way
through the thicknesses of black —
and as it pierced
the heavy ceiling of the soil —
and launched itself
up into outer space —
no
one
even
clapped.
I can still hear my one and only senior high Readers’ Theatre performing this in rehearsal and at the talent show.
Have a wacky Wednesday!
Love you all,
Janet
Bright Side 
Definitely wacky, XO Kathy
xo k
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Love the poem.
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