Someone Else’s Stars
The sun is our center
bringing light and life.
Painted on the walls
of Lascaux caves,
the sun illuminates
the bulls
and the Magdalenian
artists.
Worshiped by naked pagans
in mid-winter dance,
her eight-minute flicker
renews the soul
and reminds the senses
of calming spring.
“Prepare to plow and sow,”
says the sun on the Winter
Solstice.
“Prepare for another
940 million km,”
she echoes through the void.
Days grow longer
as the axis allows
the angled gleam.
The axis allows those
seasonal shifts.
The axis on which we spin,
it is necessary and it is also
our center.
Not the sun only,
but our rotation too
permits us.
We spin and spin
in clumsy, drunken laughter
as those 940 million km
again blink by.
We spin and spin
but rarely stop to consider.
We are the center;
we gaze to the heavens
and project myth onto stars.
When Gan De sat
cataloguing the sky,
when Gan De saw
the four moons of Jupiter,
he understood the mysteries
of the void.
Gan De,
for a moment anyway,
glanced the vastness of
possibilities.
The vastness of the solar system;
the vastness of imagination.
The return gaze was
always-already
present in his Warring State.
Before the Spring,
before the Autumnal Era,
he saw through to the depths
of truth,
and it was out there
seeing through to him.
In The Book of Fixed Stars,
al-Sufi fixed the heavens.
A millennium ago,
al-Sufi picked up his glass
and cast his gaze starward.
A blur above Yemeni skies
with its obscured haze
and rotating lights,
the Large Magellanic Cloud
gazed back
and discovered the Arabian
Peninsula.
A nebulous sphere
gazed back
and discovered
al-Sufi al-so.
Corsono sat with pen
and glass bringing science to
Catalonian Jews.
Illuminating benighted lives;
illuminating the frum
Rabbi of Barcelona,
Valencia, Sicily.
The stars were their center.
Not the Star of David only,
but the twinkling darkness too.
They knew not of Proxima b
or Bernard’s Star.
They knew only their piety
and their prayers.
Proxima b knew not of
their Catalonian observers.
And what of the folks traveling
around Proxima b?
What of the folks who watch
Bernard’s Star rise and set
each day?
They, too, look skyward.
Like Gan De, al-Sufi,
Corsono,
they, too, gaze
into the vastness.
When they see our sun,
twinkling in the sable
field of dreams,
they connect its dot
to other twinkles.
Giving shape to the shapeless
expanse, we are
but a shoulder
or a hoof in
someone else’s
stars.
Hockey Night in Emmett County
Saturday afternoons
we met at 7-Eleven
with our gear and
frozen fingers.
Fifteen of us crammed
in the bed of an F-150,
the cap our only shield
from the screaming snow.
Across northern Michigan
this motley assortment of
fourth-grade fiascos
traveled to Charlevoix, Cheboygan,
Alpena.
The ponds solidified by
the Solstice;
even the big lakes were frozen.
Mackinac Island only accessible
by snowmobile:
a row of Xmas trees lined the way
across the straits.
Rogers City was the coldest though;
it was fifteen below,
yet they made us play.
The pick-up truck
skated over the old Trunkline
through Fingerboard, Afton,
and Onaway.
We fell out of the Ford,
loaded down with
bubblegum and Slurpees
(Slurpees warmer than the wind),
to don our shin-guards, sweaters,
and sticks.
We wore stocking caps
under our helmets
to no avail.
We doubled our socks
to no avail.
Ears numb from biting
February skies,
we took the ice
and stood our ground.
An hour later,
heading home again,
shivering and forlorn,
we licked our wounds
as tongues froze to hardened
iron skin.
That night,
drinking cocoa
and sharpening skates,
we dreamt of grand glory
under the frigid twinkling of
Gemini and Auriga.
“Next week,” we prayed,
“Next week we will be
victorious.”
Graceland
South from Dongola,
we drove through the sunset
and fireworks
to the dawn of
rock and roll.
North from Tupelo,
he road in on the
wings of angels
while seraphim sang,
“Son, that girl
you’re foolin’ with,
she ain’t no good for you.”
Memphis at dawn,
crossing the river
and crossing the line.
Hernando de Soto
slept here
and died here
on the banks.
Down in the Delta,
de Soto,
Castilian giant of a man,
died and was buried
among the reeds
and the crocodiles.
Memphis, too,
has buried kings.
North from Tupelo,
he took care of business.
We wandered the ground,
saw the gaudy
Christmas tree
and the maize and blue
television room.
We toured the Lisa Marie
and the racquetball court.
We passed the bar
to get to the racquetball court.
In the garden,
a young woman
wept at his grave.
Elvis was long dead
by the time she was born,
but she wept.
Perhaps she listened
to his old records with
her grandfather.
“Blue Moon of Kentucky,”
“Brown Eyed Handsome Man,”
“Blue Suede Shoes.”
Perhaps they listened
while she sat on his lap.
He smoked his cigarettes
and bobbed his head
while she stared into his eyes
and loved him.
He made her peanut butter
and banana sandwiches
as they listened to
“Heartbreak Hotel”
and worked in the garden.
He smelled of
aftershave and Beeman’s.
She rolled with laughter
as he tried to emulate
the great hip-shake
to the sounds of
“Hound Dog.”
He never caught a rabbit,
but she loved him anyway.
And she wept at the grave of
Elvis Presley.