It's the late 1990's, and a boy stands in a street looking at the stars. Or, at least, he looks towards where the stars ought to be. There is not much sky to be seen, from where he stands, as the hills rise steeply around him. City planning documents referred to the area as an "urbanized streambed," and, sure enough, when it rained hard enough the storms drains would fail to keep up and the street along the valley floor would once again surge with water. In especially stormy weather, the water would crest and overflow the sidewalk curbs, angrily reclaiming its ancient banks, to the great delight of the children watching from the relative safety of the porch up the hill. To be sure, the valley no longer looked like a streambed. Instead of forest, houses now grew out of the hillside. The sandy bottom of the creek had been replaced by cobblestone; the cobblestone, in turn, by red brick. The curves of the stream were now straightened and flattened into a narrow road, little wider than an alley, but grandly called an avenue. The turtles had been replaced by cars, and the minnows by children, who darted among the parked cars as the minnows had between the rocks. This was an arrangement which the children found quite agreeable, but which drivers on the street found rather less so. (One suspects that the turtles might have had their thoughts on the arrangement as well, but they were long gone, and their opinions had not been consulted.) At the end of the street, the valley broadened into a grassy field between two hills, one of which boasted the neighborhood playground, and the other of which was notable primarily for its excellence as a sledding hill in winter. In between, a soccer field filled the space of what once might have been a pond. (There was, admittedly, a baseball field there as well, but the boy did not play baseball, and so the field was of no consequence.)
It is not in the soccer field that the boy stands, however, but in the valley-bottom street in front of his house, and so, as we have noted, his view was limited. Not only did the hills rise, with houses and apartment buildings precariously perched in rows along their sides, but the great trees also blocked the view. Maples, they were, the larger one rising from beside the road to overshadow the house behind it. It was wide, it was broad, it was magnificent, it dropped the best leaves in the fall--but only after displaying its glory in an eruption of color. It was, in other words, the ideal tree, or so the boy thought--except, of course, when one was trying to view the stars, in which case its spreading boughs obscured, rather than displayed the glory. Of course, one could take a few steps from under the branches, but then one was directly under the street light, which obscured the stars in its own way.
It's late enough at night to risk stepping out into the middle of the intersection, where steep narrow roads drop down the hills perpendicularly to greet the narrow valley road. On one of the side roads, the red brick has itself given way near the bottom to concrete, required due to numerous and frequent repairs. Even now, the cement is scored and gouged, scars left by box trucks seeking a shortcut around the traffic on the busy main routes, just a couple of blocks away. Lured in by the promise of a quick and quiet alternate route, trucks would start down the steep road which went straight down the valley-side. Only too late would their drivers realize that the road at the bottom was too narrow and the hill on the other side too steep for them to cross without incident. Unable to reverse up the steep hill (though some would spin their tires fruitlessly trying), they would slowly, painfully SCRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPE their back end on the cement as their front end leveled out and rose on the facing road. The boy's house was perched on the hill at this intersection, and the front porch provided box seats to this regular show. (Once, gloriously, a semi-truck had attempted this inadvisable feat, and suspended itself, trailer and all, between the two hills--wheels off the road, helplessly stuck. Now that was a sight! It had taken police and tow truck drivers the better part of a day to figure out how to resolve the situation!) In winter, the fun would be augmented when the steep hill would ice over, and unsuspecting drivers would suddenly find themselves not driving, but skiing down the hill. This could provide hours of entertainment on a snowy day, especially when paired with a mug of hot cocoa and a blanket, and viewed from the living room window. The characteristic noise of cars sliding down the hill would send the boy and his sisters racing to the window to watch. On the whole, it just about made up for the trade-off of having to shovel the snow off the sidewalk all the way up the hill.
Now, however, it is not winter, but spring. The boy shields his eyes from the street light, turning to put it behind him. Thankfully, the usual cloud cover has dissipated and he now, finally, has a clear view of the night sky. He spots it immediately: the comet, spectacularly continuing its slow procession across the sky. The radio had said that the comet might be visible with binoculars, but it had shown up so much brighter than anticipated, that even here, below the streetlight, it shines clearly before the boy's eyes. How long had it been since it had last been seen? Decades? Centuries? Millenia? Yet, here it was, having traveled the universe to show up at a minor intersection in a little borough in the second-largest city in the state. Halley's comet had heralded the battle of Hastings--was this one, too, an omen? A question without a reachable answer. At the moment, the comet didn't seem that portentous. In better lighting, its two tails could have been distinguished, but, as it is, to the boy its outlines appear blurred, even smudged, and only one tail is visible. He closes an eye, extends his arm, sticks out his thumb, and extinguishes the comet. He moves his hand, and it reappears. A celestial messenger, but the size of his thumb. A proclaimer of glory, but out-of-focus. A herald of the doom of empires, but appearing to a brick-lined streambed. How splendid and ordinary and wondrous and mundane, this heavenly object! How like, in that respect, to its brethren, the stars of the usual night sky.
The boy turns his attention to the other stars, barely visible in the glaring light. He thinks he can make out the Big Dipper--but, then again, he still tends to get that one confused with other constellations. Orion, on the other hand, was an old and trusted friend, his belt unmissable within the sea of stars. Not as flashy as the comet, they, too, looked down into the streambed like they always had--since before the boy lived there, before the house on the hill had been built, before the red brick had replaced the cobblestone, before the great tree had grown, before the turtles and fish had swum in the stream. Year by year they had looked down into the valley. While the comet was a temporary visitor, the stars were constant, and proclaimed on that night the same message they had proclaimed every night, to those with ears to hear. And for a moment, the boy paused in wonder, as he had done many times before, and would continue to do through the years.
It's getting late. The boy shouldn't stand in the intersection for too long. He shakes his head to clear it, takes one last look at the comet, and heads back up the hill.
---
It's twenty-five years later, and a man stands in a driveway looking at the stars. Or, at least, he looks towards where the stars ought to be. The glare of the streetlight overhead makes it hard to make out anything in the night sky. He thinks he can make out the Big Dipper--but, then again, he still tends to get that one confused with other constellations. Orion, on the other hand, was an old and trusted friend, his belt unmissable in the sea of stars, if he could just get out from under this light to see it. He looks down at his daughters, also straining to see into the night sky. The oldest has recently read a book about constellations, and is trying to teach the younger ones how to identify them. "Why don't we head around back so this light isn't blinding us?" he suggests, and almost before he's finished the sentence, they're already around the corner of the house. He follows them, and even before he's entered the backyard he is met by a chorus of joyful shouts. The youngest runs up to greet him, pointing to three stars in the sky: "Dad, Dad! I just saw my first 'Rian!"
Sonnet 19
The wheeling, turning, brilliant points of light
Are silent heralds of a greater mind
They guide, they lead through pain and toil and blight
That men still yet their Master's will may find
Our destinies the stars do not control
Though ordered reason in the heavens reigns
But point to him alone who holds the scroll
That all within the universe ordains
In law, too, are his mysteries revealed
That men might call upon him by his name
--thereby the sick and wounded may be healed--
And rebels now have no one else to blame
Yet stars and law both pass away with night
Obscured, not killed, are both by Dawn's true light
