NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY
All for the Love of the Moon
Neither a telescope nor a photograph can capture the eye of the imagination
I took the cover photo and the two photos below, during the full Lunar Eclipse of January 2019. It was easy to capture the full moon in the cover photo, prior to the eclipse. The photos became blurrier and more grainy as the Blood Moon formed. I have much to learn about astrophotography. But the enjoyment is in the journey and seeing the growth from year to year.
Our moon has always fascinated me. Have you heard of the man in the moon? I see myself and all of humanity in the moon. There are so many similarities between the lunar cycles and the cycles in the lives of mankind. It’s poetic.
Some people see only the moon. I see a love story. Neither a telescope nor a photograph can capture the eye of the imagination.
Mankind has explored the moon for centuries. Her gravity pulls us near and draws us to her light. She sweeps our tides from beneath our feet and we fall powerlessly in love.
She shines down upon us as a sweet gift from the heavens. Our night sky basks in her glistening beams. She glows upon our obscure firmament and illuminates our wilderness.
She opens our hearts to an undiscovered universe. She arouses our curiosity to all that is unknown. Not a single star or even the brilliant sun can compare to her beauty.
She rises like a beacon in the night to dispel our darkness. Her orbit takes our hand and leads us through eventide into dawn.
There are other satellites in our universe, but she is the only one for us. Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, and Neptune, all have satellites to call their own. But Terra Mater, our earth, has but one satellite to which she clings. The one Gaia holds to her bosom, as she slowly distances herself from us at 1.48 inches per year.
We seek to discover all there is to know about her celestial body, as she dances and revolves around us. We witness her beauty wax and wane through the shadows of the night. Her cycles unsettle and move the earth beneath us. Our hearts rattle at her sight and we wait patiently for her gentle flares to radiate upon us.
Astronauts have flown 238,900 miles just to stare closely into her radiant eyes and cup her bright face. People have sacrificed their lives to touch her lunar surface. Voyeurs have stalked her with high-powered lenses.
She has suffered asteroid impacts of astronomical proportions in her past. The telescopic eye reveals deep mountains of scars, which are hidden to the naked eye. The mere passer-by will never know her depth.
Time and life have shaped her and painted her many faces. Endurance has endowed her with a beauty all her own. She has a history and a story to tell to the universe.
Many of her mysteries have been unearthed. We wish to know her inside and out. We dream of touching her luminescent skin. We long to search all of her secrets, to know her in a way no one has ever known her before.
We wish to peel back her layers, to see what she has seen. What beauty or tragedies have her eyes beheld? We wish to hold her in our arms for eternity as she slowly slips into the distance.
She has faced many endings, only to begin again. She is steadily birthed anew, constantly growing from darkness into light.
From afar, she is waiting in the space between us, to cast our darkness into the sea and to gleam light upon our life. So we wait for our star-crossed lover to meet us when all else has left us.
And all of this…for the love of the moon.
I took the above photo a few days after the Hunter’s Moon this month. It was a glorious night. You’ll notice in the following photo, the sky was so bright, it looked like the daytime sun rather than the moon at night.
I decided to write a Twittle to accompany the romantic sentiment of this piece. Carolyn Hastings , I hope you like it!
A bright orb, over our earth, looms a shared space, and energy transfers Between earth and our moon, mutual attraction stirs.
Mia Verita 2022
Thank you for reading.
This has been my The Amazing Moon Is a Gift of Nature prompt response. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I also hope more writers will join in the fun!
If you haven’t had enough of my writing yet, here’s a poem I wrote on Medium a few years ago about the sun. 😎
Thank you to all the hard working editors of Reciprocal, Dr. Preeti Singh, Sahil Patel, and Yana Bostongirl, for giving this moon a place to shine.
Thank you, Dr. Preeti Singh, for this inspiring prompt.
Here’s Leonard Tillerman amazing response to this prompt.
Here’s Dr. Fatima Imam lovely response to this prompt.
Mia Verita is a lot like the moon. That’s why she enjoys photographing and learning about the moon and stars. She enjoys photography, sketching, writing poetry, and sharing inspirational stories.
If you’d like to read all of my stories and those of other Medium members, you can join Medium using my affiliate link. I’ll receive a small portion of the membership fee at no additional cost to you.
