Checking on the moon

 

This month’s waning moon was just rising over the neighbor’s house when I stepped out late into the early spring night. The air was cool and still. I could hear students partying into the night many blocks away. Our neighbors have two girls. I think that the younger one will finally learn to ride a bike without training wheels this year.

I looked for the constellation Cassiopeia, but I couldn’t make her out. Maybe she is still hidden below the eastern horizon. Maybe I will see a young woman that I know in the summer. She has been studying abroad across the Atlantic. She fell off her bicycle last fall and broke her collar bone.

And there’s a new moon every month.

And my neighbor up the street is starting to show. Due late summer. I wonder if it will be another girl - or a boy this time.

Now, back inside with the light on, my window is opaque. My cat sits warm on my lap as I make a few notes so I don’t forget what I remembered.

And now Rita has jumped over the arm rest to curl up in my wife’s purple chair.

I really should go back to my bed.

Sunny and 70 is the morning’s forecast. But this is Kansas. Anything could happen.