Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Starfield

The stars are brighter without the moon in the sky, Mars and Venus burn like a signal fire in the moonless night, and it seems oddly more quiet. The last week or so fog has lifted after three in the morning, slowly, but building up to challenge the sunrise and to confound those of us on the road before the sun.
Years ago, I nearly rammed a truck in the fog, on a back ass county road, a white truck with no taillights, the rear of the truck loaded down with cattle feed, poking along slowly in the fog before dawn, and all I could do was go around him, in the dark, in the fog, and the sensation of imminent Death overwhelmed me as I whipped around him and back into the lane. Springfield Georgia (not the one in North Georgia) is nothing more than a crossroads only locals know about. To die there, hitting all those bags of feed, in the dark and the fog would have been odd.
I go out into the yard and listen, look up at the sky, and I wonder how many people do this, stop before dawn to see the Universe in the dark, every star a sun, every sun perhaps with planets, each planet maybe home to lives and souls like our own, or perhaps strangely unlike anything we can comprehend, living billions of miles away, living lives we cannot grok at all, and they might think the same thoughts.
A faint star, as tiny as Springfield is, as forgotten as they day in the fog by everyone but me and the driver of the truck, might have in its orbit a being writing about a day only two beings remember, and perhaps they are writing at this very improbable moment.
Come back to Earth, and now look up at a sky where someone a mile away might be watching the same stars. Maybe in the next town, or even next door. We have created in those people aliens, and we do not speak to our own kind, while dreaming of what those on other worlds are like.
Take Care,
Mike

Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Of The Sun

Somewhere, in a past so distant that the human brain cannot comprehend the matter, some tiny and insignificant organism was exposed by the tide, yet survived, for being a tidal creature, it could more handle a drier environment. It needed moisture, and when the tide returned again, it was saved from desiccation. Over millions of years, the descendants of the tiny would-be land creature grew more and more tolerant of being away from the sea, and plants were born.

The sun knew nothing of this, knowing nothing of something so tiny as the earth, so far away that its gravitational pull would capture it, but not be affected in any great way. The sun spun on  away to wherever it would be guided, the earth spun around the sun, millions and millions and millions of trips around and around. Billions of creatures lived and died, dinosaurs rose and fell, species evolved or went extinct, and finally, in a space of time so incredibly tiny, so minute as to not be noticed by anything capable of notice, I arrived, and you did, too.

Here are some photos of the nearest star, captured in a moment, the descendants of the first land plant growing around us. To me, and perhaps to you too, the Live Oaks are giants, and perhaps, to them, we are but flashes of life, brief, dangerous, yet temporary.

The morning starts cold, the sun trekking Her way towards the north now, longer days, yet not warmer, not yet. The light slashes through the darkness, feeding the trees, giving heat to the earth, brightening the sky, and I am there to see this, as I am wont to do, very early to greet the sun.

In some way, every living creature is kin to all others, to the first, to the last, to all who were and all who are, and all who will be. The sun spins, spiraling to a tune that lives inside us, too, as we make our way to wherever it is we go.

I greet the sun early, as I am wont to do. The light of the day begins like a liquid, flowing into the spaces it can, then overflowing to the rest of the earth, and into the sky. I greet you too, fellow beings, kin of the first creatures, survivors of your spins around the star nearest to us all.

Enjoy your day, of light and warmth if you have it, and if you do not, may the next spin of the earth, bring you a moment in the sun.

Take Care,

Mike