This week, in spite of all the stress from war and taxes, one still may ride the Gilded Goldfinch Moon as it rises in the evening and waxes through the night, sets in the morning and becomes full on April 16 and then ebbs slowly toward May.
The night brings up to 20 shooting stars an hour from the Lyrid meteor shower starting April 16, overhead in the eastern sky after midnight. And if you are too lazy or indifferent to get up to see the Lyrid meteors, you can imagine them lighting up the sky as you lie in bed.
Early in the morning you can watch for planets or pretend to watch for them.
Saturn, in Capricorn, is the earliest of the morning stars this month, preceding Venus and Mars, which have both moved retrograde into Aquarius, and which remain the two prominent morning stars before dawn.
Then there is the sun. By April 1, the sun reaches a declination of four degrees, 52 minutes, almost 60 percent of the way to summer. The meager inventories of change that characterize equinox now quickly fill with new details each day. The floral and faunal fragments of the season multiply, literally filling in the space of the earth with tangible, visible clockwork.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the fourth week of middle spring. In the meantime, all you really need to do is ride the moon and planets, the stars and the sun. If you work at it some, you don't even have to use your imagination.
