Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Reflecting in the moon's small misshapen sphere is stolen sunlight. Nighttime snow glows and our rutted path is marked by little shadows in a row where our feet pressed through deep snow. Every day the dogs have to earn their time in the woods. From the end of a training leash they walk with me indoors, turn with me unexpectedly, and never know when the door will open after they sit. Stay.


With patience thin and thinning I work with them in the mornings and when I return home. After many winter moons cast light on snow that will fade as daylight and warmth creep back into the world, the stinky dogs will do as I ask. One day as the rhododendron buds now face up to a frozen sky begin to open, I will walk on the road again and jog to the end and into the forest. Eventually, as the frost lets go of the ground and dissolves with the spring, I might have dogs that glance my way and follow my lead, rather than ignore my frustrated pleas. Come back!


Winter's deepest moments are already over as sunlight stretches its time and pushes dawn over hillsides surrounding Lake Zoar a blink earlier everyday.


According to the U.S. naval observatory astronomical applications department, the sun and moon movements are precise. For Newtown, at longitude W73.3 and latitude N41.4, civil twilight began at 6:20 am. The sun's transit, when it's highest overhead, occurred at 12:07 pm, and civil twilight ended at 5:55 pm The moon's stay aloft was much longer. Moonrise was at 1:21 pm the preceding day, its transit at 10:02 pm. The moon will set at 5:22 am, roughly one hour away from sunrise.


For less than 60 minutes the sky will blush with sunshine and by 6:19 am -- one minute earlier than today -- a watery orange wisp of sun will soon lift itself over the crest of dark hills.


As the Earth lopes around the sun, the moon circles us as we stare overhead to see its face.


What Orion defends and the solar system reveals is a gibbous moon with nearly all of its face complete. Some days we see a sliver, and some days the moon hides, leaving us with darkness and time.


Always in motion and always swinging on invisible lines is a universe somehow and somewhere set to move endlessly. Eternal, over and over again.


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