For as long as we can think of stories, there has always been one about stars— how they floated into inscrutable space, a group of them winking like necklaces a woman looped on a shelf of low- hanging cloud, before continuing with her labors. How could a pestle blow rearrange the universe instead of threshing the hulls from grain? Wrapped in layers, origin is an heirloom piece one generation hands down to the next. And in the 1400s, someone noticed the interstice of sterres. Astronomers have tried to figure out interstellar distances through parallax or the observed displacement of an object caused by a change in point of view. More recently, they've made radio images of gauzy threads, mysterious filaments at the center of the Milky Way. They're like flimsy patches of glitter I could sew on my sleeve or jeans, or pin to my hair. I imagine the ends waving to each other or plucking at their harp strings, each movement the same distance from the next or around 150 light years away— the points they occupy as well as the space betwyne them.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.