Two day diary of a night sky
Tass Holmes (Melbourne University, Australia)
Last night the full moon, even high up,
had a halo,
a gauzy mist ringed around distinctly
by a great drawn circle
where that floating ball had been dropped into a pool
and left, leaving only the one
expanding ripple line.
Like a silver ball it was, floating, stilling that water
in the giant’s bucket,
announcing the clearing weather,
and the wind to come,
this morning.
Tonight, heading due east along ‘the runway’,
stereo frog sounds
greeted me from side ditches.
The mountains
were a grateful depth of lightlessness.
The moon and Venus, that singular evening star,
venturing, close as two brothers together into the gloom,
scraped their light through the darkness,
slashing whitish
across the watercolour
grey-black folds of snow clouds.
Later, the clouds have become yellow foam.
Venus and the moon are washed up there,
like bright jewels
ensnared, caught
by the edge of the froth and tossed around
in sudsy gurge and sandy streaks,
sewn in against the night.
Tass Holmes lives east of Melbourne in the bush, and is currently completing a PhD in anthropology, about complementary medicine, at the University of Melbourne.
