Blood on the Moon

The last time I had seen a lunar eclipse I was a young girl standing in the middle of a tree-lined street with head tilted back as if to catch stardust in my hair, and arms outstretched to embrace the mother moon I had never seen in this way before. I didn't know that the blood on the moon was from sun rays passing through the earth's atmospheric veil, and I danced in the street that night in total awe of its red hue.      

Now, here I was years later and grown, supine across the hood of my escort's BWM, shimmering and naked on a beach towel while the vehicle's host, sublime in his tuxedo, stood near, bemused and more interested in watching me than the night sky's celestial event. Resting against the windshield, I peered through his binoculars, saying my words to the image I spied through the lenses instead of directly at him:        
        
"Ancient civilizations used to think that the moon was being swallowed whole. They'd beat drums and blow whistles to drive off the beast that would devour their goddess."        
        
Nursing a glass of flat champagne, he approached the side of the car, admiring my form. "Yes, imagine. They took it as a sign of war and famine, and the end of their world."        
        
I kept my eyes trained and replied, "What was terrifying to them is for us a moment of suspended beauty, a reminder of how we are travelers in space."        
        
As a child I loved to lie on midsummer grass, my eyes on the wisps of clouds that passed overhead. I felt the earth rotate underneath the grass and the soil it grew from.  Lowering the binoculars and turning towards him:      
        
"I don't want to be in a box in the dark in the ground. Carry me on the updrafts to the clouds that rain down. Let a tree drink of me. I'll go to the tips of its branches, I'll turn sunlight into green leaves that reach for the clouds that I used to watch when I'd feel the earth turn beneath me."        
        
He indulged me while I reminisced and then finally took my hand to guide me back into the car while all around was bathed in blood as the lunar goddess was consumed.