“Blood Moon”

We almost arrived too early.
At first squint I couldn’t figure what it was,
the figureless red balloon
hovering somewhere over that horizonic hill,
before a stratus swallowed it whole.

And then it resurfaced,
edges now sharp and focused,
like when the optometrist switches out the lens
in that big machine pressed to your face
and the blurs projected on the wall
are reincarnated as neat newspaper letters.

Just in time for the latecomers’ moonrise,
we’re the ones who wander in by some accident
after the show has started;
left standing, but these are the best seats anyway.

I look over at my little brother,
whose Puckish grin is almost too wide for his face.
We are timeless for almost ten minutes,
giddy and unbothered,

before I slip my feet back into the well-worn shoes of a cynic,
since the moon will be less full tomorrow
and my brother will not always be ten.