Howling at the Moon

     We sat outside on our deck in the cricket darkness on Sunday evening watching the earth eclipse the moon. I have experienced a solar eclipse and several lunar eclipses in the past, but I had never seen a blood moon. I admit I was expecting something less in the citrus, fall gourd and bad tanner spectrum of color and more in the grisly murder or gloom and doom spectrum.

     Even so, I was not disappointed. Though I understand the physical science of an eclipse and do not believe in its auguries, it always infects me with a sense of its mystique. There is something elemental in the movement of the spheres that lifts it beyond science.

     And I know that I am not the only one who feels it. Just as the veil of earth's shadow dropped over the last splinter of light at the edge of the moon, in a distant corner of our neighborhood, a coyote lifted its face to the sky and howled; a long, haunting note that overwhelmed its wary blood and burst from its throat like a cry of hunger. The coyote howled again and again. Then, here and there, a dog barked in response; whether in sympathy or warning, I do not know. And, mad woman that I am, I howled back because it seemed the appropriate thing to do.

     Sitting in quiet communion beside me, unruffled and even amused by my occasional quirks, my husband reminded me that there was a baby sleeping in the house next door.