stars

...How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Walt Whitman.

We lay back in the lawn chairs arrayed about the fire, our own constellation of laughter and love. Tall and small and saturated with sunshine, we waited. We watched. We groaned at missed comets and exclaimed over found satellites.

Our lives so long paralleled, so infrequently over-lapping. My oldest love and her family meeting and loving my newest love. We lay back in the lawn chairs arrayed about the fire, with friendship that glows steady, shared heartaches that flash like meteors, and new memories brilliant over faded clouded ones.

Stars shine brighter in the country and dance across the bowl of the sky.