Sometime between 1 and 2 a.m., Ken woke me up and cajoled me out of bed to the back deck, where I stood in my nightgown and bare feet looking up. It was the eclipse, the solstice and full moon, and he pointed me toward how deep orange the moon had turned, right overhead, with a darker (or was it lighter?) orange crescent contained within the circle.
For many years, Ken has been luring me outside in all weather and all places to get me to look up. As someone who follows astronomy and weather, he reads the sky constantly to see what’s coming and what it means. While I’m always happy to look, I don’t share his patience and fortitude on very little sleep. Yet there’s always something to see, day or night, winter glimmer of stars or summer field of fireflies beneath a lightning-hopping panorama, so I step outside and look up.
Last night, slipping out of one dream for this glimpse before slipping into another, I saw something else too: just beyond Ken as he was explaining something about the eclipse I cannot remember today, there was another man: Daniel. Somewhere behind him was Forest, all of them in and out of the house for this hour or so, watching what happens in the sky. Orange moon above and skymen of my home below.
