The Big Dipper

THE BIG DIPPER / Robert Wrigley It is winter, we are driving at night, my young son and I, when he sees the first constellation of his life, sees it really, clearly, peering into the northerly sky over the emptiness of central Idaho, the road glazed along the river, the river star-washed, vivid with its own constellations of rapid and wave, sees it before I do, too keen on the deadly highway, the sub-zero winds, the frigid darkness hauled down by stars, sees it and calls out its shape— "like a big spoon, and there's its handle!"— and I know that I have told him before, knelt behind him and pointed past his shoulder to the bail that is a bear, delicate and rust-ridden dipper leaking star and moonlight upon us, which he sees as well, and feels grown-up about—this little knowledge of the infinite I smile to understand, seeing in his innocence and wonder my own, which I hold out to him as though it were something he might guide his life by, as though beyond this treacherous, iced-over highway there were something I was bright enough to follow on the long drive to where we are headed, toward home, that cold house dusted under hoar frost, under the North Star. 204 · The Missouri Review ...