Cosmos: A Poem

First Star

60 FIRST STAR The ridge I climb slopes up, toward time for a first star. I hike where leaf-stuff left by October covers this gravity mass I ride on, whirling. I feel this pull of the world as it turns into its shadow. Atmosphere prisms the spectrum of Earth’s near star into a color now thinning where another will appear. Careful of foot I stride the igneous surface where upthrusts pierce the crust above the pulse of Seven Mile Creek. It is late when I start back home. I cross the abandoned clearing the dense light dimming. Atmosphere has lost the brightness that blinds against transparence. And there I see it: this thin end of rays— one beam twinkling fragile in its air-lens: 61 the sharp white of Vega, like creation’s light regathered in my glance to a point. ...