UFO Sighting, 1952

If there were another way to tell this,

I’d try it, but there isn’t, 

and so I tell it this way,

the way it happened, saying:

that it was a clear summer night—

that we four were in the back yard

gathered there for no reason I now recall,

the night sky awash with brilliant stars 

when 45 degrees up in the north 

there shone a yellow light that streaked

first east, then southwest, then west

almost faster than my eye could trace;

hovering at each vertex a few seconds—

then east again, covering a quarter-sky

with each heavenly swath

except the last, when it swept out of sight

and left us wondering What was that?

and Couldn’t have been…

but it could have and probably was,

and it left me curious about other stars,

other skies, other times—

wondering, now that I have heard of them,

about artificial plateaus in Peru

and giant animals carved into the stone

that say someone above could see them,

that someone landed and took off,

made this their home for who knows how long—

and maybe all this says to us 

such things have been in the sky 

that would puzzle shepherds

and frighten prophets, would land, and depart—

in every land, myths of visits

from the heavens, of gods from the sky,

and vague rumors of a pledged return—

speculations not of that first  night

but of many later nights

when I think back to that moment

when something swept across the sky

and left a mystery still unsolved,

left an awe-struck child full of wonder,

his imagination and soul

enriched by this moment of grace.

               © David Black, 2011

Current night sky photo by Don Dixon; appeared in Scientific American Feb. 25, 2008