Recently, I learned the name that's given smaller,
more familiar groups of stars is asterism—summer
triangle, teapot, small and large dipper, belt. Is the world
still capable of beginning in wonder, which is both
the dazzle of not knowing what hit youand the second-
guessing of everything you think you knew? Each child
I bore was that kind of wonder, arriving in their own
form of spectacular—fast, eyes bright and open; wet
with the effort to push into this new world; and then
the learning to navigate their own ungainly craft, bobbing
in these choppy waters. I wanted to pluck an arrangement
of stars to fashion into an amulet for each of them. Even now
I wish for these things—table with four steady legs, hearth-
stone; strike anywhere matches, vocables chiming
through the mouth and lighting the way home.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
