Star Gazing

from when I first looked at the moon

Looking out from this world, sometimes I still see the man on the moon, remembering when I was boy with a cousin's pair of binoculars, looking up at the lunar surface to find traces of a face. One of the lenses was loose too but that did not matter, I had a mission and a fancy for looking up at the skies at different times of the year.

I would not be satisfied with just the small dipper there had to be more than just four stars forming the body of a vague saucepan, whose handle was disproportionate as far as pots go. Orion would come around sometime in the year in Italy and that was different, numerous stars and how I fatigued to see a human shape behind it.

I was looking for some stellar origins maybe some race out there would thank me for looking and watching in silence. Maybe I would mocked for looking mutely with no apparent reason other then curiosity. The planets would appear as stars that did not flicker. Any flickering would mean a sun, I learned. If I was looking in the summer I might see a planetary giant, Jupiter, cross paths with Mars and our moon. If I was at the lookout near Piazza del Popolo I would try an convince myself that I had a clear view of the biggest planet and maybe one of its larger moons like Titian.

I would  look as the astronomer in an early Melies film did, only I would not tumble from any parapet. I had no reason to climb towers and call for a following to demonstrate anything that people would want to know. I knew there would be some life form somewhere and this was the closest means of coming into contact even though I dreaded a fact. The fact of being shocked silly and finding that we did have alien cousins out there was something that lived on into adulthood. The star gazing continued without the aliens popping up though.