Lunar Turkey
Bubba Henson
This is Thanksgiving. Asheville. We’ve escaped Florida and come to the mountains in the present tense. We’ve traveled on Thanksgiving day to avoid the rush – that’s a good move. We have no plans. We have no reservations for Thanksgiving dinner.
The hotel lounge serves food, but Trixie can’t eat just anything. Radiation damage. There are certain favorites. So, I drive through Tunnel Road to where all the fast-food joints are. She can always eat a double cheeseburger and a large milkshake, but everything is shut down. Except Waffle House.
No bags allowed sign.
Inside are all the people who have no families or have been banned by their families, or don’t know who their families are, or where they are, but now they have diner-counter families. Six young adults on stools in a row. A new tradition. Two men finishing up, still in coats, new friends. The younger one’s nose keeps dripping. The older one is showing how something works with his hands. The younger man is having the older man’s explanations for dessert.
On the way out, a congenial denial of service is under consideration. The cook is blocking the door and having a welcoming and familiar conversation with a smiling wanderer who has no problem leaving his backpack and gym bag outside. No problem. He puts his hand on the cook’s arm, whose spatula looks like a cyborg limb. Several waitresses mill about the doorway. The wanderer unshoulders the backpack and places the bags near the door. The cook asks him to move them farther back, then holds the door open to let the wanderer by, and they and all the waitresses clap each other’s back like they just won a shared lottery ticket.
Trixie’s got her food and I am downstairs in the courtyard. It’s evening and I’m having a cigar and a bourbon. This is brisk weather for a Floridian. 40’s. I have long johns on. I came prepared, I knew I’d be out here for my medicine, as Trixie calls it. My grandfather Frank, my namesake, called it that, too.
I’m in an Adirondack chair, swiping through YouTube videos. Trump, Trump, MAGA, I push each to the side.
A voice behind says Look up.
I look behind me.
No, up he says.
Then I see the ring around the moon.
Two rings. Right above me, bigger than life. One ring closer in and one farther out. Two haloes. It’s an event. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my days. I turn to thank him — I would have missed it, head down in my phone. Thank you, wow I say. I take a picture. I owe this guy.
But a flicker on Facebook gets my attention. One of my favorite spoken word artists is live. I join in. Stephanie is listening to an Australian poet give a preface before the Aussie recites her poem. I can’t focus on any of it. The thread says six people are present. I don’t know the poet – I am here for Stephanie. I watch her focus.
Where is the moon guy?
In answer, he half-yells from behind What do you think?
I can’t turn my head that way. We should pack our bags I half-yell. They’re coming. He laughs and asks his wife if she heard that.
Now a woman crosses the lawn from the side, in mid-conversation as she comes. The man enters my peripheral vision like a minute hand. He walks the edge of the courtyard as if he is doing laps. The woman puts her hand on my shoulder. We are going to be friends.
I can’t understand anything she is saying. The man orbits over, picks up right where she left off, and adds a casual Shut-the-f-up to her as punctuation. Their eyes go to the ground for a beat, then they break in unison toward the perimeter for a sidebar. She staggers behind him.
The moon is pulsing, my phone is pulsing, I feel the medicine. On Facebook, Stephanie is giving the Aussie feedback on her poem. It is encouraging, but instructive. As to the form. The Aussie pauses. She was not expecting feedback. Now it is a workshop. She furrows her brow and cocks her head to the side and asks Stephanie to repeat what she said. Stephanie answers with patience. Keeps it centered on form. Talks in the first person.
I look up -- the moon is waiting for me to figure this out. We send questions about such things to Martha, a lunar devotee. She will know.
Martha texts back right away. Says ice crystals are refracting the light of the moon — a celestial cold front. But there’s more. She tells me to look at the bright star to the left and below the moon. That’s Jupiter.
I stand to get a better view. The woman is returning with her arms outstretched for a hug. I let her in because I can, my cigar to the side and my glowing phone to the other. She tucks inside my coat. The man has disappeared. Pee break or refuel.
My phone pings. I excuse myself for more breaking news from Martha. The woman melts off, her mouth open, incredulous.
The presence of Jupiter means abundance and expansion almost in alignment with celestial feminine energy. Within females. Or within the receptive/nurturing/softer energy within a man. A good omen, Martha says. :)
The woman recovers and smiles up at me, puts her hands on my chest for balance, her focus aslant. She has a shearling coat on, and Uggs that swallow her skinny legs like fencepost holes. I point to the phone. She staggers backward like I’ve struck her, then regains her balance. I do a quick looksie to make sure anyone/everyone/anybody saw that I didn’t do just that.
I praise Stephanie in the chat. General praise. Simple. But I want her to understand that I know. If you know, you know.
Where did the woman go?
Martha is back with excitement: it is a double moonbow! Wow! And the second ring encompasses Jupiter which is interesting metaphorically as far as the moon and Jupiter being in alignment with each other. Vedic astrology says, and the stars presently show, that the moon is in alignment with the sign Pisces (water) and that Jupiter is in alignment/overlapping with the constellation Aries (fire).
Everything glowing. Moon. Phone. Red tip of the cigar. Here, but traveling.
The man and the woman are gone. Back through the portal.
I ask the moon where I should put out the cigar.
Anywhere but here it says.
Solid advice.
It takes time to die out. I put the stub in my coat pocket. Yeah, it will smell. But look what I’ve done already.
Two witnesses, one above, one below. Everything I know down here and everything I don’t know up there. Nothing according to plan. All refracted through the cosmic frost of double moonbows in the mountains. Thanksgiving.
Up to Trixie in 408.
Bubba Henson writes poetry, fiction, and literary criticism in Sarasota, FL. He loves people.