When the sky is clear, and you are sitting in your car on a cool evening, the moon casts shadows in and around you. It plays off the chrome and the glass and shines off your hood. If you sit outside on the front bumper (warm engine, heat from the high afternoon sky) and gaze upward, sometimes you can see the grey-blue craters, outlined against that natural spotlight.

Why am I always amused by its effect on clouds? When daylight clouds obscure the sun and send shadows to and fro, I barely notice...

But at night, when the same clouds darken trees and subdivisions, then depart and the moon opens it all up again, I look up to see the clouds dancing around the half circle.

Maybe it is because we can stare at the brightness, which the sun does not allow. Maybe it is because it adds depth to the night and makes cold shapes warm with shadows and reflected moonlight. Maybe we just love to be reminded of movement.. the clouds drifting in front of the half full moon, the moon, pulled around us, pulling the tides and the world pulling us to the ground as it pulls away from the sun.. the movement is always there, but its presence is reassuring, on late fall nights as cold nights frost over sunny days.

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