My hand disappeared in his, our boots
swished on the snow, already hardened
by many steps. That is the Milky Way, he said,
and pointed at a giant river of twinkling lights
that looked nothing like milk.
Oh, and over there, that ‘W’ is Cassiopeia.
I knew the Big Dipper, of course,
and Father let me find Orion. A belt woven
from starlight. Draw a line through the belt
towards the left, he said. See that bright star?
That’s Sirius. The Dog Star.
No, no dogs on Sirius.
It’s part of the ‘Canis Major’ constellation,
that means ‘Greater Dog’ in Latin.
How disappointing. I had imagined all dogs coming
to us from Sirius, beings from space.
The sky began to fall into some kind of order,
a glittering glory of twinkles and tinkles
I would remember forever and my small, cold hand
being warmed in my father’s big one.
Big cities let me forget my father’s sky. Sometimes
even the moon was hidden by buildings that seemed
to loom dark, towering and unforgiving.
The city lights made me ignore the grandeur
of a world beyond, the mysteries of space.
There always was, of course, the latest on the Internet,
TV, and assorted means of communication.
A little machine on Mars sent pictures from a desert
that once held some form of life perhaps. Bradbury’s
‘Martian Chronicles’ awakened a longing, Heinlein’s
‘Red Planet’ convinced me of the reality of my dreams.
One day, after I had held my grandchildren’s hands
and showed them Orion, Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper
and Sirius – the only ones I recognised—
we found home on our small piece of earth
in the middle of nowhere on the Castilian plateau.
A warm night caressed me as I sat on the pretend
plastic boulder that looked like a stone (something
dishonest somebody had thought up to house
the gear that made our pool work);
I heard the bulls low across
the quiet night and dreaming fields,
from the pond came the occasional splash.
A nightbird called its mate, the walnut tree
bombarded the wooden bench below it,
and I looked for Orion towards the horizon,
setting my eyes to ‘far away’ to find the Milky Way,
looking behind me to the left for Cassiopeia, and whispered
‘Dogs on Sirius’ to my father who had—softer than any feather—
taken my warm hand in his cold one.
© 2023 Rose Mary Boehm
Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her latest: Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Ciberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/
