Star Trails, Evelyn Mow (June 202)

Star Trails

for my photographer husband

After sundown, due south of the lighthouse,
You fixed the tripod, its impossible
Extended legs you’d modified yourself
Stuck deep in Hudson mud to hold the camera
Still, while your canoe was drifting tide-ward.
Polaris hung due North above the beacon.
Firing twice a minute for an hour
You photographed the way the steady stars
Revealed a pattern to the turning world.
 
When I was little, Dad took us star-watching.
The coldest nights were always clearest; winter
Was best to contemplate the Milky Way,
All on our backs in some field in the dark.
Dad told us names of stars, and with his flashlight
Picked out the constellations on his chart,
Translating for us every dotted pattern
With its Greek name and fairytale story.
We saw the Leonids, the Geminids,
And once, in the small hours or we’d have missed it,
A comet with a wedding train of light
That streamed and spanned halfway across the sky.
We knew who had designed this. Dad’s delight
Was of the kind that multiplied like loaves
And wrapped us, fed us, warmed us as we lay
With frozen grass jabbing our shoulder blades.
 
In the photograph you hung for me,
The lighthouse punctuates the white star trails,
And constellations merge into the dance,
The only pattern left, concentric circles
Around the still point—to the turning world—
And your delight has multiplied like loaves.