Blood moon – the book and the event

Reading a book called Blood Moon during the week there was a blood moon is definitely synchronicity!

The title of Lucy Cuthew’s young adult verse novel is so apt – it’s about British fifteen-year-old Frankie, who unfortunately gets her period during an intimate moment with a boy she likes. Frankie is a science nerd who works at the planetarium and spends every full moon night with her best friend Harriet in their old treehouse. The poem below comes at the end of the book, when Frankie and Harriet watch a blood moon.

We set up the telescope,

watching red

seep into the moon

at its edge….

 

Blood red,

impossibly lustrous,

suspended over us

three hundred and eighty-four thousand

kilometres

away.

The beauty of the blood moon

reminds me that

the universe is huge

and we are tiny,

but so lucky,

because we get to

witness its beauty.

On Wednesday night, my family watched the moon rise over our back fence. My phone pinged with messages from friends in Victoria and other states – photos of their russet-red moon risings.

So wonderful to watch a beautiful moon from your backyard.

Take care, Victorian readers – I hope you feel the moon’s calmness over the next week.