Moonbathing

Leaf 249 – Looking Back

 

Johan Christian Dahl - A Cloud and Landscape Study by Moonlight (1822)

When I was a teenager, a friend of mine told me that from her bedroom window she often saw her next-door neighbours lying on sun loungers in their garden long after it was dark. We used to joke that they were ‘moonbathers,’ instead of sunbathers. Now that I look back though, I remember that this was in the summer, and so, I suspect that this seemingly strange behaviour might well be explained by the fact that the Perseid meteor shower occurs in August. My friend’s neighbours were probably lying out there in their back garden simply enjoying this annual, silent celestial firework display, rather than vampires on their summer holidays – as we’d so strongly suspected!

 

 

Moonbathing –

while shooting stars

fill the August sky.

 

 

 

 

Robert Ayton - The Perseids (The Night Sky, 1965)