By Their Light

I

My parents' friends' oldest son, a quiet and tall teenager, loved stars. When we visited their house once, I talked to him, some seven years older, and he showed me his books filled with cosmic history and constellations and stars. Then, I followed him to the front yard, not so overgrown with trees as it is today, where he set up his telescope, explained it to me, and showed where to look. I was enthralled by what I saw then and determined that I should learn what he knew, do what he did.

I never did.

II

But I am still an armchair star traveler. I remember my elementary school's principal using the intercom to announce Sputnik's flight; the subsequent launch of NASA's Pioneer I; John Glenn's Friendship 7 flight; Kennedy's speech announcing, "We choose to go to the moon"; the first moon landing, which I watched late into the night and morning with theatre friends in Boston; the Hubble and Chandra missions and space shuttle flights and Mars explorations and beyond.

III

In school, I loved mathematics, especially geometry, that most beautiful of systems, and somewhere along the way picked up the notion of the "music of the spheres." I loved sky globes, lamps that cast stars on the ceiling, literary references to natural harmonies. And I played the piano, returning again and again to play Bach's inventions, entranced by pattern-making, of music and numbers and stars.

IV

Astronomy Lesson

by Alan R. Shapiro

The two boys lean out on the railing   

of the front porch, looking up.

Behind them they can hear their mother   

in one room watching “Name That Tune,”   

their father in another watching   

a Walter Cronkite Special, the TVs   

turned up high and higher till they   

each can’t hear the other’s show.   

The older boy is saying that no matter   

how many stars you counted there were   

always more stars beyond them   

and beyond the stars black space   

going on forever in all directions,   

so that even if you flew up

millions and millions of years   

you’d be no closer to the end   

of it than they were now

here on the porch on Tuesday night   

in the middle of summer.

The younger boy can think somehow   

only of his mother’s closet,   

how he likes to crawl in back   

behind the heavy drapery

of shirts, nightgowns and dresses,   

into the sheer black where

no matter how close he holds   

his hand up to his face

there’s no hand ever, no

face to hold it to.

A woman from another street

is calling to her stray cat or dog,   

clapping and whistling it in,

and farther away deep in the city   

sirens now and again

veer in and out of hearing.

The boys edge closer, shoulder   

to shoulder now, sad Ptolemies,

the older looking up, the younger

as he thinks back straight ahead

into the black leaves of the maple

where the street lights flicker

like another watery skein of stars.

“Name That Tune” and Walter Cronkite

struggle like rough water

to rise above each other.

And the woman now comes walking

in a nightgown down the middle

of the street, clapping and

whistling, while the older boy

goes on about what light years

are, and solar winds, black holes,

and how the sun is cooling

and what will happen to
them all when it is cold.

V

And now, Solar Beat by Whitevinyl Design.

I cannot stop listening.

I cannot stop looking.

I cannot stop thinking.