Green-eyed,
aloof,
prowling heaven’s alleyways
with unexpected grace
you take your ease on Saturn’s stoop
then roam again the darkness,
an elegant, celestial stray hungry for attention.Prone beneath your pathway,
curbstone-pillowed, concrete bound,
I squint and ponder
remembered charts,
tracing your silent route through time
until I feel a tug
and hear the tiny, worried voice.An earthbound stray has found her friend,
her source of food
and solace
no longer rising tall against the sky but flattened to the ground,
eyes turned upward,
head bent back as though the victim of a fall.Green eyes wide,
she nudges hard against my pillowed head,
pushes back dismissive hands.Importunate,
insistent,
she bites and tugs my hair as though to pull me upright,
rescuing her realm
from a universe gone mad.I leave the comet to its flight
and offer consolation to this nearer, living world.
“Look up,” I murmur,
running hands through fur that sparks
and shines like starlight in her eyes.
“A thousand years are passing.
A thousand years have passed.”
The Comet-Watchers
Watching Comet Lulin
I love the night sky: the star-pictures of the constellations, the waxing and waning of the moon, the great wash of the galaxies. This week’s close passage of Comet Lulin, a beautiful and spectacular – and scientifically interesting – bit of celestial wonder simply couldn’t be passed by. Last Tuesday night, the evening of Lulin’s closest approach, I spent two hours lying in my parking lot with a pair of binoculars, drinking it in. As it turned out, I didn’t watch alone. Calliope, my stray Muse-kitty took time from her nightly rounds to keep me company. The poem is my way of holding on to the experience, even as Lulin streams off into the mysterious reaches of space.
Watching Lulin
Green-eyed and aloof,
you prowl down heaven’s alleys
and lurk on Saturn’s doorstep with singular elegance,
a celestial stray hungry for attention.
Prone beneath your pathway,
stretched across a concrete bed with curbstone for a pillow
I squint and ponder,
consult the charts
and probe your space through time
until I feel the tug
and hear the tiny, worried voice.
An earthling stray has found her friend,
her food,
her solace
not rising tall against the sky but flattened to the ground,
eyes turned upward,
head bent back as though the victim of a fall.
Green eyes flashing,
she nudges at my pillowed head upon the curb,
pushes back my dismissive hand.
Earthbound, insistent,
she bites and tugs my hair as though to pull me upright,
restore her world’s axis
and right a universe gone mad.
Leaving Lulin to her flight
I reach out to grasp this nearer world passing by.
“Look up,” I murmur as I run my fingers through her fur
and catch the glint of starlight in her eyes.
“A thousand years.”
“A thousand years.”
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The Cat Days of Summer
If you need a poster child for the dog days of summer, Jake would do just fine. Jake lives on a boat next to my current varnish project, and it’s clear that he hates August. He doesn’t like the heat, and he doesn’t like the humidity. He especially doesn’t like the fact that his owner won’t let him spend his entire day in the air-conditioned cabin, where he could take over the settee in the main salon, chew on his bone and nap away the afternoon in cool comfort.
Instead, Jake lays in the cockpit, on top of the cabin or on the dock and sulks. He has a sunshade, water, and what passes for breezes wafting about, but he still isn’t happy. His owner tells me he wasn’t happy in July, either, and probably won’t cheer up in September.
In short, Jake is condemned to endure dog days and dog nights until October, when summer on the Gulf Coast of Texas will have run its course.
I “enjoy” the dog days of summer as much as Jake. Since I varnish boats for a living, my office is the great outdoors, and I spend as many hours in it as does Jake. In mid-August, I start thinking about retirement, and I think about it until fronts begin moving south with enough strength to drop the temperature and humidity. By the end of August, a lot of workers “retire” from the docks in early afternoon, and don’t reappear until evening. We get sluggish, we’re grumpy and we whimper to each other just a bit. In short, we act just like Jake and all those other pathetic, overheated dogs who are just lying about, waiting for fall.
We’re not the only ones. During the dog days of summer, boat owners stop coming to their boats, and fly to the mountains. Kids stop skateboarding and head into the malls. Plants droop. Birds disappear. Only the cicadas seem active and vocal, while the whole world slows down, and begins to trudge a little in the heat.
For years, I thought the dog days of summer were named for the tendency of dogs like Jake to lay around and mope in the heat and humidity. I recently discovered that isn’t true. The truth lies in the realm of astronomy.
In northern latitudes, we think of Sirius as a winter star. Together with the red giant Betelgeuse and Procyon in Canis Minor, it forms a popular asterism known as the Winter Triangle. Clearer and more brilliant than a planet, Sirius dominates the sky near the constellation Orion. With a visual magnitude of -1.42, it is twice as bright as any other star in our sky. 
As the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major (Big Dog), it makes sense that Sirius would come to be called the Dog Star. But more than its location contributed to its name. Ancient Egyptians called Sirius the Dog Star because of its association with their god Osirus, whose head resembled that of a dog in pictograms.
The word “sirius” itself comes from the Greek seirius, which translates “searing” or “scorching”. Because Sirius disappears from the sky, moving in conjuction with the sun during the summer months, ancient Egyptians and Romans argued that combined heat from the two heavenly bodies was responsible for the oppressive heat of summer. Since Sirius was the “dog star”, and its conjunction was presumed responsible for summer’s heat, the period of time from 20 days before conjunction to 20 days after became known as the “dog days of summer”.
Traditionally, the dog days lasted from July 3 to August 11. It was on these days the Romans saw the Dog Star, Sirius, join the sun at sunrise and disappear from the sky all night. Today, the actual dates for the Dog Days of Summer have changed. Because the Earth slowly wobbles on its axis in a movement called precession, Sirius no longer begins rising with the sun on July 3. Instead, the conjunction begins more than a month later, on August 4, with the 40 days following August 4 the “new” Dog Days of Summer, which end on September 12.
As an interesting aside, the Earth is not the only “wobbly” body in the universe. Writing for Space.com, Pedro Braganca recalls that in 1844, the German astronomer Friedrich Bessel observed that Sirius itself had a wobble, as if being tugged by a companion. He goes on to note that, “While testing his new 18.5-inch lens in 1862 (the largest refracting telescope in the world at that time), Alvan Clark solved this mystery by discovering that Sirius was not one star but two. The first compact stellar remnant had been discovered, and it would prove to be a pioneer of what would be later referred to as a whole class of white dwarf stars.”
“The companion, dubbed Sirius B, 
has the mass of the Sun in a package as small as the Earth, having collapsed after depleting its hydrogen. A single cubic inch of matter from this companion star would weigh 2.25 tons on Earth. At magnitude 8.5, it is 1/400thas luminous as the Sun. The brighter and larger companion is now known as Sirius A.”
Knowing about Sirius A and B, the Dog Star and its “Pup”, is wonderful of course. It’s good to learn about the Winter Triangle, Egyptian myth and the precession of heavenly bodies. Unfotunately, all that knowledge doesn’t change the fact that it’s still mid-August. The heat and humidity continue, and just like Jake we’re still suffering through these doggoned summer days.
Watching Jake mope and sigh and roll his eyes, I can’t help laughing just a bit at his distress. He seems to be taking it all so seriously. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the same star which gave us the Dog Days of Summer also gave Jake his attitude about the whole thing: serious Sirius.
It’s a passing thought that raises other questions. What if our late summer heat wasn’t associated with the Dog Star, Sirius? What if the star traveling in conjunction with the sun had been Humoris, rather than Sirius? If the Egyptians or Romans had found Humoris lurking about in one of the three cat family constellations (Leo,Leo Minor and Lynx), would we now have the Cat Days of Summer to enjoy?
With Humoris, the Cat Star, overseeing the summer, things might look just a little different. Instead of moping on the dock, we could have a nice swim. 
Instead of enduring day after day of utterly predictable sameness, we could look around for some surprises. Rather than passively lying about, waiting for the unpleasantness to end, we could be more actively involved in creating a bit of pleasure for ourselves.
On one level, this is pure silliness, nothing more than a bit of heat-induced word play. On the other hand, it’s also a reminder that play is acceptable, even for adults, and that the same human imagination which named the constellations and gave life to the stars can re-imagine the world.
Looking around, it’s clear there are cats – and people – who are just as willing as Jake to whimper and moan over the circumstances that beset them. In the same way, there are people – and dogs – willing to take the plunge into a more refreshing way of life.
Whether we’re dealing with the heat of summer, or the heaviness of our lives, the truth is we’re not obligated to lie around and mope, grumpy and whimpering like a helpless victim of circumstance. There’s a time in life to be serious about its realities, but there’s also a time for lightness, humor and play to balance out its burdens. If we choose to be guided by a different star, so be it. I rather enjoy the thought of Humoris, the Cat Star, holding sway over this uncomfortable season – even if I had to invent her myself!
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Arc to Arcturus
At 8:37 p.m. on July 13, 1977, a lightning strike at the Buchanan South substation on New York’s Hudson River tripped two circuit breakers in Westchester County. At Buchanan South, which converted 345,000 volts of electricity from the Indian Point nuclear plant to lower voltage, a loose locking nut, combined with a faulty upgrade cycle, meant the breaker wasn’t able to reclose and allow power to resume flowing.
A second lightning strike caused two more 345,000 volt transmission lines to fail, with only one reclosing properly. That meant loss of power from Indian Point. As a result, two other major transmission lines became over-loaded. When Con Edison tried to initiate fast-start generation at 8:45 p.m., no one was overseeing the station, and the remote start failed.
That’s when the lights went out in a Morningside Gardens apartment at 123rd and Broadway, along with the lights in the rest of New York City. I just had returned from four years in Liberia, and was visiting friends for a few days before heading to California. We’d finished dinner and were enjoying the twin pleasures of good conversation and the view from their 12th floor apartment, when New York simply disappeared.
It’s common enough for storms to start lights flickering and dimming, and not unusual for power to go out in a neighborhood even without a storm. Transformers explode, winds bring down powerlines, squirrels play tag, and people sigh as they wonder how long it will be until they can make coffee, or turn on the computer, or watch tv in air-conditioned comfort again.
But that night in New York, in the moments between Con Ed’s failed re-start and the starting of the first arson fires in the street, we knew something was different. Looking down from our perch, we watched traffic come to a halt as astounded drivers tried to get their bearings and control their anxiety. Looking off toward the horizon, there was no horizon: only a black, impenetrable abyss.
The night was one of the longest of my life. The vibrato of the sirens, the delicate horror of shattering glass, the ebb and flow of crowds around piles of merchandise looted from bodegas and coffee shops were utterly surreal, surrounded as they were by the orange glow of flames and smoke from burning cars.
Eventually, as the fires in our neighborhood began to be extinguished and the crowds seemed to be losing their enthusiasm for mayhem, we began to rest – two people sleeping as one person watched, and all of us wondering what might be next.
As the first tendrils of light began to wrap themselves around buildings and climb down into the streets, the sense of relief was palpable. Civilization’s veneer had worn a bit thin over the night – not only because of the arson, looting and general rioting which erupted in the darkness, but also because of the darkness itself. As we plunged inexplicably into that abyss, our candles and flashlights did nothing to allay a fear so primitive it was only the rising of the sun that brought release.
In the morning brilliance, an entire city seemed to stretch and heave a vast sigh of relief. In the street outside our apartment, someone had opened a fire hydrant just enough for a faucet’s worth of water to stream down, gentle and benign. Suddenly filled with good humor and ready to trade stories, a city lined up at its hydrants with soap and towels, toothbrushes, wash basins and razors, and prepared to become human again.
As I think back to that amazing New York night, I remember my response with absolute clarity. I wanted to go back to Liberia. Looking down into the chaos-filled streets, the West African bush seemed preferable to “civilization” in any number of ways, not the least of which was the quality of its darkness.
I first experienced darkness as a blessing during childhood. Dressed for midwestern safari, I’d clamber into the car beside my Dad, and off we’d go. Traveling country roads, we’d roam as far from the lights of our little town as we could. If it was summer, we’d pull out a blanket and lie on the ground, amazed at the bright river of stars streaming across the sky. If it was cold and snowy, we’d wrap the blankets around us for extra warmth, drink hot chocolate and admire Orion, my favorite winter constellation.
I learned the constellations first - Orion, the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, Scorpio. Later, I began to learn stars -Antares, Aldebaran, Polaris, Betelgeuse, Sirius – and little verses that helped find them in the sky. “Arc to Arcturus, spike to Spica”, the verse went, and arc to Arcturus I did, gazing over and again into mysteries that seemed close enough to touch.
Eventually, I began to grow up. Trips to the country with Dad weren’t as much fun, and adventure became measured in lumens. We hadn’t heard of light pollution, and we were seekers of light, real or metaphorical. The bright lights of Broadway, the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, even Paris, the City of Light, drew us out of our darkness toward their flames like a great, fluttering cloud of moths. If we sometimes had to settle for the lesser lights of Des Moines, Paducah or Evansville, no matter. Our lives began to arc in new directions, and Arcturus was forgotten.
Forgotten that, is until years in the African bush and a newly-acquired taste for offshore sailing pulled me back into the darkness, amazing me with the realization that “star” light is real. Even without a moon in the sky, starlit paths cross land and sea; night creatures scurry ahead of nearly invisible shadows and ribbons of spume stream across the waves, hardly distinguishable from milky rivers in the sky and lit by the flickering of uncounted distant stars.
There is darkness that is an absence – an absence of the neon, incandescent and fluorescent lights that mark the presence of humans and their activity. When that darkness comes, as it did in the New York City blackout, it can be unnerving and awkward, occasionally frightening and quite capable of releasing all the darkness in the human soul.
But there is another darkness which is all presence: velvets folds of night sprinkled with tiny bits of light and time that testify to our presence within a reality far older than human life. Wrapped in that darkness, secure and at home as child with parent, our souls begin to arc to Arcturus and beyond, toward the galaxies beyond our heavens and into a more compassionate understanding of our own place in the universe. Arcturus is already there, waiting at our vision’s edge. We need only lift our eyes.
Edvard Munch ~ Summer Night on the Beach
I live near the sea. On these summer nights
Arcturus is already there, steadfast
in the southwest. Standing at the edge of the grass,
I am beginning to connect them as once they were connected,
the fixity of stars and unruly salt water -
by sailors with an avarice for landfall.
From where I stand the sea is just a rumor.
The stars are put out by our street lamp. Light
and water are well separated. And yet
the surviving of the sea-captain in his granddaughter
is increasingly apparent. (more than life was lost
when he drowned in the Bay of Biscay. I never saw him.)
As I turn to go in, the hills grow indistinct as his memory.
The coast is near and darkening. The stars are clearer,
but shadows of the grass and house are lapping at my feet
when I see the briar rose, no longer blooming,
but rigged in the twilight as sails used to be -
lacy and stiff together, a frigate of ivory.
~ Eavan Boland
© Text copyright Linda Leinen 2008
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