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