I wish I could show you my night sky. My camera is not good enough.
No camera is good enough. So I will use words instead.
A picture’s worth? A thousand is more than I need.
But far too few for the stars. I do not know how many there are. I do not know their names, but there must be names for all of them. Or numbers, at least. Think of that.
I have to be very patient. Some appear only slowly. They come and go. I see some only out of the corner of my eye. One peeks out from the edge of the mountain range at the north, and disappears. It blinks on and off, then returns, and slowly rises.
It doesn’t rise, in fact. We slowly bow to greet it.
The Milky Way washes from north to south, a frayed bright smudge across the dark sequined drape.
The galaxy on edge. I know this, but somehow the words have no meaning.
Up above the world so high. So high! So many. So vast. I am so small.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing that matters to me really matters.
That’s fine.
One falls fast and vanishes. That is not a star, I know. I try to conjure a wish. I have no wish. I need no wish. I am content.
Other bright spots that move are also not stars. They move sideways. The steady crosswise traveler may be a satellite. The bright flashes: an airplane. Toward Anchorage? Toward Moscow? Up there, shades are closed, people try to sleep. (So glad I am here.)
What is that bright glow to the northeast? I triangulate. Could that be Cody? (Poor Cody; that many lights at night? Can they see my sky?)
After a time the glow brightens suddenly, sharpens, focuses. Not Cody at all.
It is the moon, rising over a gap in the ridge. A face slowly takes shape.
Not really a face, of course. This has always seemed to me a sign of grace, that it glows at us from up there, looking to us like a face.
And it seems to smile.
© Lois Wingerson, 2021
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