Mass of the Blood Moon Eclipse 2026

 

Lunar Eclipse, photo by Howard Brannen

The Lunar Eclipse will be happening tonight, Thursday, August 27.......it will be what is called a "blood moon" eclipse because of it's copper colored effect.  Here in Arizona (MST) we can witness the eclipse at 7:30– Partial eclipse, and by 9:00 PM it will be the maximum eclipse  showing the dark reddish-brown hue.  By 11:00 it will be finished.  

Poet Denise Levertov imagined the Eclipse as not a phenomena, but as a  Mass, a celestial event that moves us all in its orbit into the sacred, and the mystic.  

MASS OF THE MOON ECLIPSE

Not more slowly than frayed human attention can bear, 

but slow enough to be stately, deliberate, 

a ritual we can't be sure will indeed move

from death into resurrection.

As the bright silver inch by inch 

is diminished, options vanish,

life's allurements. 

the last silver lies face down, back hunched, a husk.

But then, obscured, the whole sphere can be seen

to glow from behind its barrier shadow: 

bronze, unquenchable, blood-light. 

And slowly,

more slowly than desolation overcame, 

overtook the light, the light

is restored, outspread in a cloudless pasture of

spring darkness where firefly planes

fuss to and fro,

and humans turn off their brief attention

in secret relief.

No matter:  the Rite contains its power, 

whether or not our witness rises toward it;

grandeur plays out the implacable drama

without even flicking aside our trivial absence, 

the impatience with which we fail to respond.

                And yet

we are spoken to, and 

we do stop, do, 

do give ourselves leave

to listen, to watch.  The moon,

the moon we do after all love,

is dying, are we to live

on a world without moon?

We swallow a sour terror.  

Then that coppery sphere, no-moon

become once more

full-moon, visible in absence.

And still without haste,

silver increment by silver increment,

the familiar, desired, disregarded brilliance

is given again,

given and given.

 

Denise Levertov, "Mass of the Moon Eclipse"

from This Great Unknowing:  Last Poems, 

1999, New Directions Press