Stars

When I let my eyes relax while looking at stars the sky appears in its entirety, in some illusion, all the points of light in my peripheral field whether they are real or not--since the mind fills in blanks with continuity: I see some stars, so I see all the stars. At 3am, I'm watching the stars move.

Stars are beautiful, but my gaze falls to the blackness between them. Like the melancholy and stagnation that haunts me quietly, inescapable as blackness draws in light.

Rudy and I stare upwards. He pats my back, I nuzzle his arm, we confer, we sigh, seeing the same stars, but drawing our own constellations. Above one of The Dippers, I think The Big, is a bit of symmetry, a kind of Rorschach pointillism--Nature, artist-- and there I find the night's purest medium for feeling at once insignificant, as stars are want to impress, and grand. The stars stare back, and I meet Rudy's eyes. We confer, we laugh.