|
We
are looking for the clue to a mystery, a relative
inside our own blood, an animal so equal it
reflects
what we hate and love about ourselves.
—Linda Hogan
&now, right alongside
Cygnus—Hear the great wings
whoop-whooping?—real as raven yesterday buzzing so low,
the red squirrel dropping a pinecone from its mouth.
One of us says it, though, "How do you see a swan
in just five points?" and to me, too, they just look like stars,
but Joon's being sky pilot, steering us. "It's the Northern Cross,"
he says, his voice above, cool, clear as night, as though
cruising the cosmos, and says, "It's called dark matter."
"They don't know," I say, thinking for all our stories it's still
a mystery who I am or on whose license I am winging where.
Sasha's telling how she used to be called Sasquatch Bionic
Big Foot Woman. Michael pipes in he was called Michael
Michael Motorcycle, and—Jeez! I am thinking, don't we sound
like family. And we are drifting, at least 10 of us, foot to foot,
head to head, crosscrissed whicheveryway, as if someone
tossed matchsticks across the floating dock, stars in the lake,
the bowl of night above around far as eye can see. "Ooooooo!"
"Ahhhhh!" I've missed another shooting star. How come they all
see them? Eric, who's from Brooklyn, sees himself shooting
through Ursa Major. "I feel so far from home," he says,
"We don't see stars much—bears either." Someone howls—
or was it a loon? or wolf? Here, among Leo, Sagittarius,
Pegasus, we're all something wilder. "Where's Orion's belt?"
someone asks, "and what's that cluster low, over there?"
"The Blue Whale," Joon says, and of course, he's lying—
the heavens being no ocean. But you know that hot dervish, Rigel,
in Orion's foot, is 50,000 jumps tougher than the Sun, only one
of 200 billion in the Milky Way, itself just one of a million
galaxies? Do you know, do you know each second the Sun
tears up four billion tons of something into light, and we're all—
big foot woman to galaxies—floating here on Eagle Lake
this blue star September night, second millennium, plus three. |
|
