A Walker in the Suburbs

They were with me all the way to Metro this morning, the moon and Venus. The moon a thin paring, a baby’s fingernail; Venus an emphatic dot above and to the right. Star Date magazine calls them “the most beautiful of all astronomical duos,” and I agree. Clean and simple in the dawn sky, they are twin beacons.

The way they looked this morning reminded me of a wink and a smile. The moon’s lopsided grin rakish and debonair; Venus with its pure eye twinkling. Don’t take the day too seriously, they told me. I’m trying to listen.

I walked outside this morning onto the darkened deck. A cool, steady wind was blowing and the moon and stars shone bright and clear. I thought about the worlds that exist beyond our world, about possibility and eternity. Then I walked inside to read this headline: “Galaxy may have gobs of Earth-size planets.”

In a paper published in the journal Science astronomers posit that there are “tens of billions” of planets the same shape and size as Earth in the Milky Way. This conclusion is based, among other things, on measuring “the minute wobbles [I love that phrase] of stars caused by the exoplanets that orbit them.” And also by a method called “transiting,” which looks for reductions in light coming from the star and planets being observed. Fascinating stuff, for sure. Also fascinating is the discovery of a rocky planet in a “habitable zone” around a star close to Earth.

It’s too soon to know for sure of course, but it seems increasingly likely that we are not alone in the universe.

Tonight, if we’re lucky, we’ll look skyward and see specks of light streaking across the night sky. It’s the Perseid Meteor shower, late summer’s elusive fireworks. I say elusive because clouds or city lights often edge them out of eyesight. But some years the heavens have cooperated. One summer we saw the meteors from lawn chairs by a lake in Arkansas; another year we camped out in our neighbor’s driveway. More often than not we just turn off our porch light, walk outside and wait. The brilliance is fleeting and it’s easy to think you’ve imagined it. But you haven’t. It’s a glimpse of the beyond, and it’s unforgettable.

It’s August now. Mornings are later and evenings earlier. Some of my after-dinner strolls end in darkness. But a few nights ago I walked mid-gloaming, and the sky shimmered with light. The colors were those of a baby’s nursery, pinks and blues. Only they were lit from inside and shone with the brilliance of the spectrum; they were almost kaleidoscopic.

Before there were televisions and computers and electric lights to read by late at night, there were sunsets to awe us into silence, to send us off to sleep believing in something larger than ourselves.