Tonight the waxing moon is on its way to becoming (tomorrow night, 7 March) a full moon. It is called “Worm Moon” by the Farmers’ Almanac, a name which refers to the earthworms that emerge from the soil around now, as the weather gets warmer and spring showers begin to fall. Not only is the light of the Earth’s satellite not particularly brilliant, but this month the moon is also spineless, a planet without a backbone.
Come to think of it, what is the comfort zone of these crawling critters if not, for example, an apple? Yet if we close our eyes and imagine one such fruit, the first image that probably comes to mind is the logo, glowing with led lights, of a famous brand. And seeing as (presumably) a human has just taken a bite out of said apple, that must mean we are on our way to purging nature of all that is “natural” …
In order to get us to reflect on the apple “inhabited” by a worm, Caravaggio painted his basket of fruit higher than eye level, compelling us to stretch our necks in order to look upwards at it. We could do exactly the opposite and be incited by the Worm Moon to bend our necks downwards, if only for a few moments, in order to tune in to the natural rhythm of the Earth. So what should we ask of the full moon on these two nights? Not to be a ‘rotten apple’ but, rather, to work a miracle.