Moonbeam

At 06:00 today the phonetic proximity of the words moonbeam and mung bean occurred to me, although, of course, they do not look alike if you compare a single mung bean in the palm of your hand with this poor photo.

If you have ever sprouted mung beans, or alfalfa, in a jar, you will know that mung beans like to be in a crowd, and yet the English description oddly spans two words, whereas the word moonbeam, describing a lone phenomenon in the night sky, has slammed two words into one neat little unit. I know the word is not the thing, but occasionally I wish a kind of imaginative logic applied to such things.

I try to think of such things when I wake up ridiculously early to catch the only bus to the next town until mid-morning to have a translation certified because it sure beats muttering things like “it’s cold”, or “I need coffee”. And because talking of moonbeams, and their like, is seldom the whole story.

©2019 Allison Wright