When all here on Earth seems such a mess, I often look to the heavens for a sense of what is really real. Certainly long after I am gone and, sad to even imagine it, long after humans are gone, this new moon will continue to set against the scrim of a Spring sky in conversation with the trees and mountains below.
I hope for enough clear sky today to see Mercury in transit across the face of the sun! Below is a photograph I made of the transit of Venus in June of 2012. What a wonderful way to put our small lives into a different and valuable perspective!
Still Learning To See 
As always, your wisdom shines, John. Here’s one of my favorite Whitman poems that expresses the same idea:
When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns
before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add,
divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he
lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Walt Whitman
Thank you, my dear, as always!
Very cool photo of the sun and Mercury!
Many thanks, Ashley. I will certainly submit some work. I’ve had work purchased under the same program and it hangs in rooms at Central Vermont Medical Center. A fine, fine thing this is!
Wonderful and inspiring, as always!