Another part of town

Yesterday evening we met friends Naomi and Louie in another part of town. This is the marina on Lake Pontchartrain, by the yacht clubs and fine seafood restaurants.

When we pulled off Lakeshore Drive into the public parking lot, the air was still warm off the lake, and to the south a huge pink cumulus cloud bulged in the still-blue sky. We took an elevator up to the restaurant. Below its pilings a bad dixieland band played and misters cooled people sitting out at the casual cafe by the boats.

After we ate our fill of charbroiled oysters, crab cakes, and calamari, Louie said, "Follow us," and we caravaned after their Prius around the marina, past little stilt-raised houses and boats, to the end of the breakwater.

Here, people parked at the circle, looking out over the lake or back over the harbor where the neon-trimmed lighthouse tower glowed in front of a dusky sky. Men crouched patiently on upturned buckets, casting lines out into the water. Teenage girls sat on the roof of a van, their faces upturned to catch the breeze, and their bare feet planted on the still sun-warm windshield.

The pink cloud was now a dark thunderhead, flashes of internal lightning fluttering within like a moth in a lamp.

We sat around the bend of the concrete breakwater, sheltered from the splashing waves, watching the boats come back into the harbor, as the sky slowly darkened. You could see a pale glow beyond the lights, where the full moon was rising up from the misty horizon.

This is a Blue Moon, the second full moon in a month. It wasn't actually blue, though, not this one. It was golden, like an apricot hanging low from a branch. Just ours for the taking.