65f this morning, overcast but occasional sun.
Tonight, as I am sure you have heard, is the harvest moon, a traditional time of celebration around the world. Our harvest is almost complete, just pears and lots of peppers to gather, with squash, broccoli, a few tomatoes, and cucumbers still faithfully rounding out our dinners.
I thought I would share photos of the moon I have taken over the years today.
New moon, winter 2013.
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Moon over Galway Bay, Ireland, 2015.
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The Harvest Moon
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807 –1882
It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
Of Nature have their image in the mind,
As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
Only the empty nests are left behind,
And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.
Under the Harvest Moon
by Carl Sandburg
Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
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Harvest Moon - The Mockingbird Sings in the Night
by Mary Oliver
No sky could hold
so much light -
and here comes the brimming,
the flooding and streaming
out of the clouds
and into the leaves,
glazing the creeks,
the smallest ditches!
And so many stars!
The sky seems stretched
like an old black cloth;
behind it, all
the celestial fire
we ever dreamed of!
And the moon steps lower,
quietly changing
her luminous masks, brushing
everything as she passes
with her slow hands
and soft lips -
clusters of dark grapes,
apples swinging like lost planets,
melons cool and heavy as bodies -
and the mockingbird wakes
in his hidden castle;
out of the silver tangle
of thorns and leaves
he flutters and tumbles,
spilling long
ribbons of music
over forest and river,
copse and cloud -
all heaven and all earth -
wherever the white moon
fancies her small wild prince -
field after field after field.
No sky could hold
so much light -
and here comes the brimming,
the flooding and streaming
out of the clouds
and into the leaves,
glazing the creeks,
the smallest ditches!
And so many stars!
The sky seems stretched
like an old black cloth;
behind it, all
the celestial fire
we ever dreamed of!
And the moon steps lower,
quietly changing
her luminous masks, brushing
everything as she passes
with her slow hands
and soft lips -
clusters of dark grapes,
apples swinging like lost planets,
melons cool and heavy as bodies -
and the mockingbird wakes
in his hidden castle;
out of the silver tangle
of thorns and leaves
he flutters and tumbles,
spilling long
ribbons of music
over forest and river,
copse and cloud -
all heaven and all earth -
wherever the white moon
fancies her small wild prince -
field after field after field.
Some Harvest Moon superstitions for you, from the website In Pure Spirit:
- An old Chinese superstition suggests that your ears may fall off if you point to the moon.
- It’s dangerous to sleep with the moon shining on your face.
- Seeing a new moon for the first time on a Monday is lucky.
- Go outside with an empty purse or wallet, under a full moon, say “full up” nine times, and within a few days, you will come into money.
- A red moon is the sign of war
- If the first time you see a new moon in a month is by looking over your right shoulder, it is lucky
- If you rub an injury on a horse with silver during the light of a full moon, then it will recover
Taken on our ridge, unknown year.
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Closing finally with Neil Young's iconic song, Harvest Moon, the unplugged version.
