​🌹🎶 Pink Moon 🌸

A ramble through the blossoms of the April Full Moon 🌸

Inspired by the rising tides of the Pink Moon, I rushed out to capture this moment of wild blossoming Spring joy to share with you. In her poem Don’t Hesitate, Mary Oliver counsels us to give in to sudden, unexpected feelings of joy, reminding us that ‘Joy is not made to be a crumb.’ As fearful voices of scarcity rant and rave, a moment spent amongst an abundant banquet of tree blossom fills my cup with resilient joy. So I hope this post brings rejuvenation to accompany your transit of the Pink Moon.

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Image: Pink Moss Pixabay

🌸 May-Flower
by Emily Dickinson

Pink, small, and punctual,
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,

Dear to the moss,
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.

Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,
Nature forswears
Antiquity.

Creeping, curling, unfurling a pink panther carpet across rocky places, comes pink moss. A bright luminescent pink flame, her Latin name, phlox, draws its tendrils from the Greek phlegein - to burn and PIE root bhel - to shine, flash, burn. Symbol of hope and renewal, her springtime emergence dubs the April Full Moon Pink.

As the moon orbits the Earth, her face catches and reflects the kiss of the Sun at varying angles. Her elliptical dance sculpts her appearance in the sky, and we catch sight of her full face as she reaches the opposite side of the Earth to the Sun. When she rides low to the horizon at dusk, the atmospheric colours of sunset cause her to blush. Soaring to her furthest apogee from Earth this April, the Full Pink micromoon takes as her companion the star Spica, dazzling sapphire of the Virgo constellation.

🌸 Clocks within Calendars within Circles within Cycles…

Here in South East London, the Full Pink Moon officially appears at 20.22 on 12th April - find out when it will reach you here

As lunar motions mark the passage of time, we find words blending both moon and month including Igbo onwa, Malay bulan, Maori marama and Romanian lună. The first full moon after Spring Equinox is used to designate the start of Passover in the Jewish Lunar calendar and Easter in the Gregorian solar calendar. In Northern India, Hanuman Jayanti, the birthday of Monkey God Hanuman is celebrated, whilst in Sri Lanka, the Bak Poya Festival commemorates the Buddha’s second visit to resolve a dispute between two Naga Kings.

In Thailand the turning of a new Zodiac New Year is celebrated with the Festival Songkran (from Sanskrit meaning passage) Within a lunar month, the Moon transits through zodiac constellations, spending 2-2.5 days in each sign. The movement of Earth around the sun creates the appearance that the sun is also transiting through the zodiac, spending about 30 days in each constellation along its ecliptic pathway. The reality is a bit more complex because, like a spinning top, the Earth ‘wobbles’ on its rotational journey which wobbles our calendars.

🌸 As above, so below - everything’s on the move.

🌸 Pink Moon Inspirations

As human attempts to organise the complexities of life into clocks and calendars will always be blown out by our mindblowing universe, here’s some musical and poetic inspiration gesturing towards wild vistas of this pink moon. Nick Drake reminds us that no matter how many skyscrapers, empires or edifices to power are built, none reach as tall as the pink moon. Beloved poet Mary Oliver takes us on a moonlit dip, urging us to listen and say yes to the call of the wild.

🌸 Nick Drake - Pink Moon

I saw it written and I saw it say
Pink moon is on its way
And none of you stand so tall
Pink moon gonna get ye all

🌸 Pink Moon - The Pond - Mary Oliver

You think it will never happen again.
Then, one night in April,
the tribes wake trilling.
You walk down to the shore.
Your coming stills them,
but little by little the silence lifts
until song is everywhere
and your soul rises from your bones
and strides out over the water.
It is a crazy thing to do –
for no one can live like that,
floating around in the darkness
over the gauzy water.
Left on the shore your bones
keep shouting come back!
But your soul won’t listen;
in the distance it is sparkling
like hot wires. So,
like a good friend,
you decide to follow.
You step off the shore
and plummet to your knees –
you slog forward to your thighs
and sink to your cheekbones –
and now you are caught
by the cold chains of the water –
you are vanishing while around you
the frogs continue to sing, driving
their music upward through your own throat,
not even noticing
you are someone else.
And that’s when it happens –
you see everything
through their eyes,
their joy, their necessity;
you wear their webbed fingers;
your throat swells.
And that’s when you know
you will live whether you will or not,
one way or another,
because everything is everything else,
one long muscle.
It’s no more mysterious than that.
So you relax, you don’t fight it anymore,
the darkness coming down
called water,
called spring,
called the green leaf, called
a woman’s body
as it turns into mud and leaves,
as it betas in its cage of water,
as it turns like a lonely spindle
in the moonlight, as it says
yes.

🌸 PINK MOON PROMPTS

1. What tiny daily actions or inspirations, like pink moss, help you kindle flames of resilience and hope?

2. What needs amplifying or bringing to fullness with wild Spring energy?

   What song can you dance or sing at full voice/ power/ volume?

3. What’s on the move - what do you want to offer up, release or transform?

🌸 Wishing you bright illuminating abundant joy this Pink Moon