Dick Westheimer

Reflection on the Still Silent Water

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

Noctalgic: Those suffering from “sky grief”

        —coined by Aparna Venkatesan and John C. Barentine

 

1.

We came for luminescence.

The plankton here awaken

late and long after the sun sets

and glint beneath the still

water of Tomales Bay.

Like little galaxies, they spread

as our hands trail over

the side of the kayak, stirring

eddies slight and silent.

Above, the Milky Way, like a shawl

woven of silvered wool, drapes

over the bare shoulder of the sky.

Across to the north, a star falls,

its tail as long as myth

persists for a full

beat of breath.

A thousand thousand lesser lights

scatter, meadow flowers flung

from horizon to horizon,

and mingle with the creatures

beneath: Plankton

meets stars meets plankton

meets stars.

 

2.

Here, back home, the night

sky is abraded by city

lights—burned as if

by bile fire.

We are crowded with more

hungry deer than stars,

more sooted views

than meadow flowers.

There is no Milky Way

surging from the south, no

goddesses and gods of night

arrayed in their mantles

of pin-prick sparks. But

there is a new scripture,

a prayer for the noctalgic:

Blessed are those who forget,

which I cannot. I am cursed

to have sat quiet in the night,

wrapped in the perfect silence

of stars, remembering.