Orion Rising

Orion is climbing into the sky a little bit earlier each night. Soon, we'll be hanging out together for hours on end. The big hunter is my favorite constellation. In the cold nights of winter, I look up and watch him glittering brightly, and I imagine striding across the night sky, seeing the universe as he would see it. The sight of him frees my mind from the constraints of gravity. But there will be many nights when he is concealed behind the earthbound clouds. Even then, I will be aware of him, out there continuing his ageless procession, serene and implacable. In my mind, I have long had a bond with Orion; He, the mythic hunter, and myself, a hunter of myths. I suppose it is a sort of imaginative male bonding. It's nice to have mythic friends, fraught with the fire of living stars. We both are creatures of the night, alive in its velvet expanse, and both, I sometimes think, the manifestation of earth's dreams.