"...a bigger white dot."

    Tonight is full moon.  It was twenty years ago, at 18,000 feet on Kilimanjaro, we made our final camp. There was not a cloud in the sky. I don't remember the moon,  but stars were so bright and seemed so close that we could almost hear them. The air was so thin that climbing into my sleeping bag winded me. Lisa and I were up at midnight for the final climb to the summit so we could be there for the spectacular sunrise over East Africa. We clawed our way up, scrambling through scree of mixed snow and gravel. Finally, gasping for air, we made the summit...which was shrouded in clouds limiting our view to a few yards. The next morning, as we descended, the clouds had lifted and there was the peak in all its shining glory.
     There was no light pollution on the mountain to obscure our view of the stars. Tonight, viewing the full moon, I'll think about it shining it's light on the places I've been. Will I go places again? Could my traveling days be over?  Memories of trips that Joanne and I took enrich my life in the land of grief. Gratitude floods me for the travel I've had.

Starry Starry Night
by Louis Jenkins

A bazillion stars overhead, and I look up as amazed and
baffled as the first hominid who gazed upward must have
been, stars passing overhead like a very slow-moving flock
of birds, going somewhere, disappearing into the wee
hours of the morning. I used to be able to recognize some
of the constellations: the Pleiades, the Big Dipper…but
I have forgotten most. Still, mankind has learned a lot
about the cosmos since Galileo's time. A friend of mine
said, "My wife bought me a telescope for my birthday, a
nice one, very powerful, I've got it set up on the deck.
You know, when you look at a star with your naked eye
all you see is a little white dot, but when you look at it
through a telescope you see a bigger white dot."

“Starry Starry Night” by Louis Jenkins, from Where Your House Is Now: New and Selected Poems. Nodin Press © 2019

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