The sun goes down
And once again
The nightly spectacle begins.
The stars begin arriving early.
But wait!
The bright light of the full moon
Is overwhelming
The masterpiece of the skies.
It makes everything else invisible to the eye.
But thankfully, like always,
The situation is only temporary.
And the show will go on.
So, for the moment, I relish the things I do see.
I stretch out in my sleeping bag
In an open meadow and look up.
I stay awake
Long enough to
See the moon set.
The temperature is dropping,
But my sleeping bag
Is made for that.
So, I warmly
Look up as the stars
Begin to take control.
And I imagine.
The afternoon’s storm
Has long passed
And cleaned the air.
The night is brilliantly clear.
And suddenly,
The Milky Way
Shows up in all its glory.
To the south,
The constellations of the Zodiac
Are on the march.
One of them,
Scorpio, Scorpius– the Scorpion, is particularly obvious.
At least for the moment.
But it’ll soon disappear into the horizon.
Because it always does.
For me, it’s the constellation of summer,
And adds to my warmth.
But it also makes me think of Orion,
My constellation of winter.
Though unseen,
The thought of it sends a chill to my feet.
Almost overhead,
Mars casts its red light
In untwinkling brilliance.
The untwinkling part is proof that it’s a planet.
I scan the sky for another planet.
But everything is twinkling.
Points of light are everywhere,
Inundating my senses.
My eyes are full of stars and galaxies.
But what of the millions
That are there, but beyond
What I can see.
And then, the fog begins to roll in.
Think fast before it fully arrives, I conclude.
Did my Kentucky great, great grandparents
Look up at the same sky, I wonder?
Is their vision of what they saw floating around out there in space?
Is a vision a concrete thing?
How far away can anything go?
The questions begin to accumulate.
Will they be answered before
The clouds takeover?
Then suddenly, I arrive at a non-answer
As I decide to figure it out later.
And the sky goes dark
As I drift off to sleep.
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