Last Star I See Tonight

Long after Venus has set, when the deepest silence of night has almost passed and a pale glow has begun to outline the eastern trees, I see, where Venus lately glowed, another steady star, almost as bright. This must be Jupiter. Last evening, when clouds still closed the east to my view, the two of them shone at once from opposite sides of the sky. If a clear night comes soon, I must remember to look for them. It's interesting to realize that when we look at planets by night we are seeing daylight -- vast swaths of it made tiny by the far vaster night sky in which they are set. It amuses me to think that while this world, seeming so large, goes about its daily business, seeming so important, it is, from other places, no more than one small bright light among many thinly scattered through an immense darkness. Why I should find amusement in such thoughts, I don't know. Perhaps, if I had more wit, I might tremble at my own insignificant transience as I gaze at the vastness of earthly night around me and know that it is, in fact, less than that small star I will soon see fleeing the dawn. But for some reason I cannot fathom, it fills me with joy. I know that I know nothing, and somehow I find that the knowledge of my ignorance is as blissful as ignorance itself is said to be.

( Sunday Verse )

Oh, yes. Happy Leap Year Day!

Expectant

The ragged edge of a cloud bank came tumbling from the west, and soon the entire sky was burdened, and sunset lost in piled masses of gray. Bereft of stars and moonlight, night lies dense and cold, smoke scented, still, its thick air muffling sound and leaving everything coated with a thin layer of damp. Early afternoon was bright, the fine haze gold and the oaks a deeper haze of gray twigs thickened with another day's growth of buds. I watched a pair of jays chase one another from tree to tree, and heard distantly what might have been the song of larks. It will soon be nesting time. Tonight the harbingers of spring are muted, and I wait for that stirring of air which indicates the imminence of rain. A chorus of frogs sings nearby, and for one moment, the clouds overhead thin enough to reveal a mere ghost of the half moon, while a solitary night bird repeatedly pierces the darkness with a high pitched cry. The night, tensed and waiting, is all expectation, a runner at the starting line, a charge building toward lightning, a fault about to slip.