The moon is waxing gibbous tonight. It’s hard not to notice its brightness. Tomorrow it’ll be a full moon and the day after that begin its waning phase. In the unusual circumstances of a once in a century pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns we’ve had to endure, the sight of the moon doing its thing, perhaps ever since our solar system came to be, is a welcome sight.
Fay Aoyagi, a haiku poet, writes in “Moon in the Haiku Tradition”:
[…] you will find many ways to say ‘moon’ in Japanese saijiki [a dictionary of seasonal terms used by haiku poets]. For example, the full moon may be called gyokukon (round soul) or sasaraeotoko (small but lovely man – a nickname for the moon).
So keep your eyes open tomorrow night. You’ll see a small but lovely man in the sky.