8 Haiku 4 You

and a surreal story about trash

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

First: A Story of the Lunar Eclipse: The Full Blood Moon

I set my alarm for 1:00 Friday morning but woke shortly after midnight. I went outside to check the sky, thinking I would find it cloudy, and go back to sleep. That is my history of trying to see lunar eclipses, but this year was different. For the first time in my 72 years, a clear night conspired with interest in the eclipse and I stayed up to watch.

The night sky was slightly hazy, so the full moon had a halo. It wasn’t a circle atop the moon, like the halos in cartoons, but an aura of light like the one that surrounds a saint’s face in medieval paintings.

As I watched the moon, a few clouds passed close by. There was enough mist that I could not see any features on the surface, even with binoculars, but the disc illuminated the landscape so that the house cast a shadow on the backyard.

My yard is narrow, and a retaining wall holds it in place. The moon illuminated the wall and a small strip of grass. These features darkened as the eclipse progressed.

It began around 1:00, EDT, with a slight bite taken out of the lunar disc. The pace of the action was agonizingly slow, with the darkened portion growing to half of the moon by 1:45. Around 2:20, I could see an outline of the moon, with a white spot on top, looking like a polar ice cap.

By 2:30, the landscape was as dark as one under the New Moon. The moon had a dark red cast, not the blood red I expected. It seemed as though I had a close view of a distant planet.

I thought it might make a great shot in a science fiction movie. It might be an image for a book cover. I felt I might write that book, or produce that movie. A day later, I realized that it had probably already been done.

As the clock approached 3:00, I decided the moon would return to its normal appearance without my supervision and went back to sleep.

Haiku

Solstice slides away
We race toward Equinox
Under Orion’s sword

She browsed here all fall.
The deer who left with winter snow
came back with a fawn.

Cranes on the river
Have flown off north for nesting
longer days arrive
 
Swallows seek their nests
In boxes on the lakeshore
Blue jay sings from branch
 
The osprey returns
with warm days and shorter nights
Fish spawn in the depths
 
Green all winter
The Christmas fern is now brown
Fiddleheads pop up. 

Mountain turning green
The bear rises in the north
Dogwoods flowering

Orion sinking
Westward he leaves morning skies
Scorpion rises

New Landscape

Dreaming of oil wells blooming on a landscape newly denuded of trees, I drifted off to another place. On the edge of a landfill, I watched people searching for wealth. Did they seek rare metals or discarded canned goods? No! Thanks to genetic modifications, people in this altered reality could digest plastics.

One enterprising fellow carried a large mesh bag filled with water bottles. When he reached the edge, a law enforcement officer from some unknown agency stopped him. “Let’s see your collectors permit.”

“Here it is sir, I’m sure everything is in order.” The officer punched a few numbers into a hand-held device and shook his head. Then he told the entrepreneur, “Sorry, bud. The central data depot says you already reached your quota for this week. You have to leave those bottles here.”

The man seemed undeterred and called to a woman nearby, “Hey Sheryl, I’m over quota. Do you want these bottles?”

“You bet I do,” she replied. “Those are pretty good with sriracha. You got any to spare?”

“No, but I got some salsa you can have.”

“That will do just fine,” she replied.

And Another

Song and Dance

I was typing on my Samsung Tablet and wondered, “Who was this Sam, and what did he sing, and where?

Did he travel to New Orleans to dance on the sidewalk and catch plastic beads? Did he sing and dance to Puttin’ on the Ritz like Roy Bolger the scarecrow refugee from Oz, who played a nice counterpoint to the Cowardly Lion? Dorothy said, “I think I will miss you most of all.”

I have never gone to New Orleans, though I sometimes dance on sidewalks and am tempted to howl at the moon. Thank goodness I don’t howl often for it would likely get me locked up.

If they locked me up and gave me coffee, I could go stir-crazy in an 8 X 10 cell.

If they gave me a phone, could I call it a cell phone?

If a Russian head of state lived lavishly, would we say Putin on the Ritz?