Blue Moon

So, there's this full moon, way up high in the sky, because it's just after midnight here. And the sky is clear. Really clear. So this moon is just pouring light down from the sky. It's so bright that even in the country where I live, far from the city lights, you can still see only a handful of stars.

But creeping toward me, along the southern horizon, there is a long blanket of white clouds, covering Shawnee as what's left of Hurricane Issac blows over the southern states and into the Midwest. And all these airplanes, with their red and white blinking lights, keep skirting this massive storm, flying along its edge. One after the other, passing by every three minutes, always from west to east.

And I am sitting out here, finishing another night of grading essays for this online college that I work for, beneath this full August moon, and I just know there is some traveler in one of those airplanes, looking down upon those snowy clouds that are being bathed from above by milky lunar light, and he's thinking, God that's beautiful, as the storm crawls slowly over Arkansas.

I am watching him as he watches the storm, that is getting close enough so that I can just now begin to see the clouds that are breaking up along its northern edge, over the bean fields where crickets and katydids keep me company.