Mini-moon, you are invisible to the naked eye, a tiny asteroid floating solo in the vast void of space, suspended in black nothingness, drawn to earth’s lunar companion, an unlikely visitor.
Soon, slowed by a distant pull, you will travers the far reaches of earth’s gravitational grasp and enter a curving, captive path around our world, for a split second in the eternal span of the universe becoming a satellite of Earth. Hello, hello, you say, peeking out shyly in the dark, I’ve arrived. Feel free to call me la lune, lunita, yuè, tsuki, chānd, duang jan, mwezi, inyanga, cerqua, wata. I'll answer to most anything.
We try not to stare, but we peer at you through spy glasses. You are a gleaming orb from the family Arjuna. You trail our planet around the sun, measuring time and ordering the cosmos, so small, so innocent. We watch you from afar as you pass through our border, wondering who you really are at your core, what you believe, who you love, how you love. You are so different, but one of us for a moment in the starry night.
Mini-moon, your sojourn will be brief, only 57 days, not even a full orbit. You are just here for the fall season, sightseeing, taking in the view, observing, spinning in our customs. Look here, you say to yourself, so this is how they do it here on Earth. Will you marvel at the sweet blue and green beauty of our marble home? Feel protective of our fragility? Recoil from our ignorance? Look in horror at our violent ways? Will you see the hurricanes and the harvests and the leaves turning? Will you smell the briny ocean and the fragrant forests before you are pulled back into your heliocentric orbit with your kin, swooping back to deep space.
Oh, 024PT5, I am worried. Will it be the trip you expected? Will we be the hosts you hoped for, kind and gracious, providing delights that fill your memory books, moments where you look back as you travel the cosmos alone once again, and say to yourself: Look here, this was the time I went abroad, the time I was a mini-moon. Yes, of course, like all planets, Earth had some challenges to work out, but I met such lovely people. What a marvelous place it was. I wish I could have stayed longer.
This is what ‘stepping back’ looks like. If we could step back from issues that divide us, and look at other views w/o immediate judgement, the planet would begin to work out our seemingly unsolvable problems. Well spoke Suzanna!
This is what ‘stepping back’ looks like. If we could step back from issues that divide us, and look at other views w/o immediate judgement, the planet would begin to work out our seemingly unsolvable problems. Well spoke Suzanna!
Makes me think about my visit to this earth.