like a pearl

My gaze wandered to the clock.
My mind gave a jolt.
Outside I dashed.
Arrhhhh!
The eclipse had already started.
Back inside I dove and onto the phone.
My daughters voice answered.
"Blood Moon," I gasped. "Get the kids to the window!"
I rushed back outside.
A dark thumbprint had crept up the face of the moon.
My husband soon joined me and held his phone up to the night sky.
He has an app that shows the constellations in real time.
I giant crab seemed to be holding the moon like a pearl in its pincers.
Slowly the moon darkened.
Stars glittered far and wide.
Full moons usually glow, flatly white, like a paper disc pasted on the sky,
but as the eclipse cast its shadow onto the surface of the moon it became a glowing orb,
and through binoculars,
a giant fragile balloon,
lit from within.

special sparrow

I wheeled up the drive and there like an ornament was a plump bird perched atop a shrub. It's head was dusky black, belly, roundly white. It was only as it turned and flashed russet that I knew.
A Towhee.
Not an unusual bird but somehow, in the cool afternoon light, it seemed an exotic stranger to the yard.
A special kind of sparrow.

hope on

I heard a sudden commotion behind me in the room.
"Snow!"
"Look, it's snowing."
"There's snow."
I turned and gazed at a cluster of teenage faces and followed their gaze to the windows beyond.
I squinted.
A few sparse flakes were dusting down like salt sparingly shaken.
Only in Abbotsford, I thought.
Only here at the coast would there be such awe and joy over next-to-no-snow falling.
We always hope though.
A few trees are pushing leaves already and bulbs are poking up through the soft, rain soaked ground.
But we still hope.
Pussy willows are just five or six weeks away.
But we hope on.