I am calm as I slide the eyepiece into position. It’s a calm that has been inside me for fifty years. It started one warm still night when the world was a place of unnamed wonder. Complaining and squirrely I bounced gently in my grandfather’s arms as he carried me outside. “Guardare le stelle,” he said to me, holding me up six inches closer to the night sky. The stars are close enough to try and grab. “Guardare le stelle,” he repeated in a quiet mantra. The universe chimed brilliantly silently and fifty years later I remove the lens cap.
Monthly Archives: June 2014
#1 All At Sea
They tell me to begin leading the horses to the side of the ship. I do it. The breath of the gray is warm on my hand. His nostrils twitch and flex and the hair of his muzzle tickles. We approach the edge and before us all we can see is the slowly rolling infinite blue. His head jerks. I do not stop for this is something I cannot do so with a shift of the weight in my hips and a smooth gesture on the bridle I send him into the nothingness. I turn and move toward the bay.