Teemings
The E-Zine of the Straight Dope Community

When Arcturus Sets

by Algernon

It happened late on a warm August night,
deep in the darkness of my back yard,
lying on my back in the cool grass
listening to the chirping crickets
and the soft rustling of the neighboring cornfield.

Worn out from a day of childhood play.
A long day spent at the extremes;
idleness and exertion;
lazy boredom and dizzy excitement.
A normal day,
indistinguishable from the others that consumed my summers.

My mother, using wisdom seldom displayed
let me stay out late, far beyond bedtime,
letting me extend the quickly dwindling
number of days of freedom before
school imprisoned me again.

We lived far from the city
on a lake road of cottages and modest homes.
In the country in those days,
a moonless night
allowed the stars to fill the sky with majestic brilliance.
The Milky Way glowed from horizon to horizon.

I lay there gazing up in reverie,
in a trance of awe and wonder,
overcome with a visceral
comprehension of the incomprehensible
vastness and depth of the universe.
Knowing that the starlight falling upon my eyes was billions of years old,
I realized I was less than a grain of sand in all the oceans of the world.

Yet in spite of my insignificance, I sensed I was not alone.
There were other worlds out there with boys like me
right then gazing across the sky at me.

The universe opened up and beckoned me to her
complexities and mysteries.
At that moment
I lost my mind to the stars.
I lay back wondering?
"When Arcturus sets,
what constellation do they dream around our sun?"