Hong Kong: total eclipse of the Moon

(click on photo to enlarge)

At five am this morning, the now totally uneclipsed full Moon shines silent and bright in the west-northwestern sky. (Mister Bijou currently keeps erratic hours.)

So bright the Moon its brilliance washes out all its own features: no Man in the Moon, no craters nor seas. Instead, a mute white disc shines at the centre of a faint corona. (Sadly, the photo does not do the corona justice.)

Bathed in pure light, some inhabitants of a little island in the South China Sea gear down from the night as others gear up for a new day. Still others, fitfully awake and gloriously alive, try to keep at bay niggling dawn thoughts.

Those thoughts about existence and non-existence, thoughts like the ones in Philip Larkin's poem Aubade.