Study leave III

Walking out onto the deck, roofed by the third floor wasn’t an adventure. But with my cigar in hand, glowing in the darkness, I journeyed around to the sea side. It was darker there. The waves shuffled in, no growl or thud. It was more like a deck of cards, working into each other. So still that the lights from airplanes on the holding pattern from Kennedy flashed over the water, intermittent moments like shooting stars. But the show wasn’t in the water. It was up there, up where stars polluted the skies. Once in a while I look up at night and converse with Orion, dependable in his belt, carrying his club. His knees shine, like mine when I’ve pushed too hard in exercise. And the Pleiades, clustering close, a tiny dipper, there above the hunter. There’s a star between. Perhaps it’s a planet. It shines, constant and bright, but it’s always there. Planets wander you know. It made me wonder if it had a name, planet or star. Anyway, the personalities were all there, but they were accompanied by a host, strewn out across the blackness, above the darkness of the sea.



When I walk Sam, after the parking lot lights have winked out, those friends are there with that bright one between. But here, over the shuffling darkness there were more, more, more of them. Each time I looked there were more. It was a wonder. It was a sadness. How many times had I looked up and not seen, because of street lights, or house lights, or because I didn’t look up at all, occupied by the small necessities of down here. Perhaps there are more of them there than I thought. Perhaps I missed them, blazing out there, distances beyond thinking, shining down on my world and I missed them.



I smoked my cigar and considered all that unseen and unnoticed, listening to the sea shuffle in to the shore. God, life is amazing.