BREATHE
Nobody nearby was awake
to see the neighborhood idiot standing bathrobed in his driveway gaping at the
night.
The Sisters saw him.
Europa's Bull saw him. Zeus saw him. The Blind Hunter and Leda's Sons saw him
there.
Flags of cloud unfurled
toward sunrise. No more stars would fall. He turned to the front door of his
little house under the sky.
Just then a piece of Mr.
Halley's wanderer rocketed into the sea of air overhead. Ice dissolved in
flame.
It made him smile to
think that he would breathe it in and out someday along with the breath of
Jesus and da Vinci and many another fool.
The constellations have fascinated the watchers of night skies for millennia. Orion (the hunter whose blindness was cured by Helios the sun), Castor and Pollux (the Gemini, the sons of Leda, one of whom was fate to live among the gods and the other among the dead), Pleiades (the seven sisters, the daughters of the titan Atlas--- after Atlas was forced to carry the heavens on his shoulders, Orion began to pursue them, and Zeus transformed them first into doves and then into stars to comfort their father) are among the most familiar. Europa was seduced by Zeus (Jupiter) in the guise of a white bull (Taurus); their sons became the judges of the Underworld after they died. (And, incidentally, Europa's brother Cadmus introduced the alphabet to the Greeks.) In addition to the constellations and planets, comets were also the subject of intense astral speculation; the one identified by Edmund Halley is the only short-period comet that is clearly visible to the naked eye from Earth. Bob weaves heavenly wonder into a speculation on immortality, or at least immortal reputation, as represented by Jesus, the exemplar of morality, and Leonadro da Vinci, the paragon of intellectual genius.
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