Passing in the Night

So despite our quarantine, and shut bars etc., we can at least leave our homes so far during this second wave, and that’s a lot. A walk, a stroll, a chance to stand and smell fresh air (when you can lower the mask, of course) to stare up at the sky and relax your eyes, is not to be dismissed anymore.

And it’s a delight to know the natural world is still spinning on despite our stupidity.

I don’t have any shots of the cranes at night because I just watched rather than fumble with phone, but I have posted some shots from other days – one of the cranes going low over town during the day, and of course, our constant companions all summer in the south, Jupiter and Saturn. Mars is in the east these days. It’ll never be easier to see so look up this weekend.

Sunset with Jupiter and Saturn already bright in the sky on the left.

            Passing in the Night

I stare out from the city walls, waiting

For migrating cranes to come calling:

Glimpse against low city-glow clouds.

Bats pass but no birds; Mars my only

Other midnight companion, with

Jupiter and Saturn at my back, a

Spider spinning draws eyes down

From treeline to the damp stone:

Seeing mites crawling across lichens

White in the street light, changes

Perspective. Some comfort comes

From knowing creatures will roam

Over these stones even if crumbled;

And the bodies above me will circle

Unceasingly in their great migrations,

When neither walls nor men yet stand.

The new moon, Jupiter and Saturn in a line across the sky with the citadel of Pamplona in the lower background

Cranes flying over Pamplona centre.