Like a diamond in the sky

I increasingly feel at home in the universe. I accept the stories that modern astronomy tells us about the stars – so very much matter and energy – and the distances and time as well - our universe. And yet what I can see with my own eyes is familiar. Again and again I look up and I see the stars. For countless generations, human beings have created a kind of meaning and understanding out of what appears to be an otherwise random sky.

And so I stepped outside and looked up at the night sky earlier this summer - and I saw Cygnus the Swan. Even with our light polluted skies and with my rudimentary astronomical knowledge, I could readily make out five stars that are part of the constellation Cygnus from my own backyard.

You could visualize part of the constellation Cygnus as a diamond kite that is tipped onto its side. The paper and the sticks are unseen, of course, but you can see the points of the kite as points of light - one star in the middle where the two sticks would cross and four more at the ends of the sticks. As I looked east over the roof of my house, the star at the point where you would tie the kite tail was southernmost, nearly over my chimney.

There is a very evident order to our universe. We know that the stars form galaxies and super clusters that are expanding away from each other at unfathomable speeds. And yet from our human perspective, the stars over our heads are always precisely where they should be as the earth turns under our feet. The pole star hangs due north in the sky and at an angle of 39 degrees above the horizon from where I usually stand on the earth. Each year as summer begins, Cygnus will always be rising in the east near midnight, wheeling around the pole star. And so on the thirtieth of May, 2017, I saw Cygnus the Swan flying just over my roof. I think that it is something to always be able to rely on the stars being out there. I have to be looking to see them.

Now it is easier for me to visualize geese than swans. I have often actually seen geese flying close at hand. From the surface of the Kaw River they flap their wings hard, scrambling to lift their bodies clear of the surface of water. They beat their large wings again and again as they climb into the sky gaining elevation. And then they are overhead, their wings outstretched, body and neck and head extending forward. The geese fly forward. And one night, I, just one single human being, standing in my backyard around midnight at the beginning of another summer, I saw a clear, fleeting image of one of those geese, playing out in a pattern of stars against a not quite black sky.

I don’t generally see the images associated with the constellations. Mostly the stars just form some patterns that I have come to recognize. The patterns have been named by people from the beginning of time. The big and little dipper look like dippers. Ursa Major and Ursa Minor – the big and little bear - in the eyes of some ancients. Cassiopeia is an elongated W. The throne of a queen. In a few more months, I will spot Orion the Hunter rising in the winter in the southern part of the sky. I look for the three stars of Orion’s belt. I forget which star in the whole figure of Orion is Rigel and which is Betelgeuse. I could look it up. Or I could just look up. I have my own names for some of the patterns I recognize.

But on this night I saw a giant goose flying forward across the night sky. Just over my roof. Flying in such nearly infinite slow-motion, with such power and grace that all of time might have just as well have stopped. It was a giant goose up there just over my roof – flying forward. And then it was just stars in the night sky again.

For imagination to work you have to have looked carefully over some time. At the geese flying from the river, for example. At the stars in the night time. You put all of these patterns into your memory over time and then one night they might just overlap somewhere in your mind. And you will be amazed, as I have been, at what you see.

I suggest that you not make either too much or too little of the imagining and realities that I am talking about here. And you surely don’t have to take my words for any of this if you don’t want to. But I am here to tell you that you can see all sorts of amazing things for yourself. And something of what I saw.

Just step outside on a clear summer night.

Look up.

Cygnus flies true.