Blue Moon, Look In Their Eyes

Here comes the shaman again. But first:

The blue moon is a real moon, and has to do with the disparity between the moon's cycle and the yearly cycle. The moon cycle is shorter than the monthly cycle by about eleven days a year. Thus every 2.7 (more or less) years there is an extra moon that occurs at some point in the year, 12 moons in a normal year, and in the third year, then thirteen moons. That thirteenth moon is the traditional blue moon, timed seasonally rather than monthly. Thus each season has three moons but then if there is the fourth moon in one season, that's what creates a blue moon. In modern times the Farmer's Almanac defines the third moon as the blue moon in a season, because the other moons have these names, the early (season) moon, the mid (season) moon, the late (season) moon. They put the blue moon third so the last moon remains the late moon.

In earlier times there were twelve named moons and so the term blue moon was used as a reset device that allowed the following moon to claim the next of the twelve names. Otherwise the moon in question would shine too early by most of a month.

There is an alternative description of the blue moon that started in 1946 and is now considered an error, discovered in 1999. This description calls the blue moon the second full moon in a single month. This also works to put the blue moon in the last days of a month and the regular moon in the earliest days of the same month. This would never happen in February except possibly in a leap year. That would be the bluest of blue moons.

You can wiki the rest of the discussion. I wrote this to anchor it. I knew there was a blue moon and until this post thought it was the monthly definition. But my excuse is that I learned it sometime in the seventies or even earlier, though certainly not before 1960. What is amusing is that the Farmer's Almanac never backed away from the traditional version. That consistent stand didn't matter, a fine example of misconceptions surviving by force of popularity.

Also the Christian Church times Easter bearing in mind the blue moon, a seasonal concern as well. So farmers and some Christian clerics knew better in those fifty two plus years. I presume the advantage of the twice monthly description is that it makes knowing what full moon is the blue moon much easier.

Blue Moon

Wait while I build fire
Beneath this fullest of old moons,
Wait until then, love.
Wait for me.
We will
Both dance in the tide of life,
Dance in the ghost light,
Dance the blue tuning
Truth of the moment given
By this old blue moon.

January 11, 2009 9:57 AM

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Sometimes we do push our own agenda. This poem describes one. I have been watching at my feeder and can testify that things are not friendly there that often. Most birds seem to act as if they are thieves and often the ranking behavior is very clear. Certain birds that are picked on. Thus some of the birds who come by and act like thieves may be those nervous birds. The rest possibly fear human civilization and its cats. I believe, however that there are certain house finches who eat at my feeder without fear. There are three of them, or were. They were raised in a nest five feet from the feeder. It has always been there for them.

Look In Their Eyes

It's not about them.
The birds are efficiently
Cruel to themselves,
Fearful of us when
We come closer than they like.
It's us we love then.
We love what we dream
Of how their lives go because
Nothing beautiful
As birds could be so
Cruel and fearful as they are,
But look in their eyes.

January 11, 2009 1:27 PM