Night Sky North of San Antonio
Robert Allen
September 5, 2021
Lee wants to see the Lyrids, so at half
past midnight, after quickly packing two
camp chairs, a lawn chair, blankets, and a small
black flashlight, we drive out 281
beyond the county line, make a hard right
on Farm-to-Market 1863,
and end up, once we follow Stahl Lane left
through two sudden hairpin turns of its own,
in the parking lot of a Latter-day
Saints church where we unload, get Lee positioned
in her wheelchair, unfold our chairs, and sit.
On the horizon behind us, the glowing
white haze competes with the cobalt above,
but the Big Dipper stands out easily
and our son points to Vega, which is where
the meteors are supposed to come from.
A whippoorwill calls from a nearby tree,
dogs bark through a distant fence, and Lee starts
to talk about her childhood while our two
grown children settle into their own worlds,
Robyn in a chair, Richard lying down
on the ground on a blanket. The dense sounds
of nature’s chorus grab my full attention
and I begin to think of human song,
an old pop tune by Presley or Hank Williams,
googling to find one on my phone and send
its lonesome notes into the air, which soon
earns Richard’s disapproval. Lee keeps talking
and says she remembers the many times
she rode with her dad in his red sedan
from Texas to Washington state and back,
and she would stargaze while looking out through
the car’s rear window, Pop being the type
of driver who would never stop to rest
but might need someone to talk to, and she
the one whose voice would help him stay awake.
The few times he did stop—middle of nowhere,
desolate country, not even a billboard
to prop against the emptiness and break
the boredom—the night sky was glorious,
a giant twinkling flower above their heads
with jeweled petals to drop on spellbound hands.
Anyone seen a falling star? I ask
when almost half an hour has ticked by.
Robyn says she thinks she saw one, how it’s
the kind of thing you cannot see directly
but only at the corners of your sight,
and in view of the chill we all agree
to pack it in. Two evenings late, one blanket
short, more eye-squinting glances here are futile.
Drive further west next time, escape the lights,
go past Fort Stockton and on toward Marfa.
Ride, like wise men, star-blind for Bethlehem.
ROBERT ALLEN is retired and lives with his wife, two children, five antique clocks, and five cats. He has poems in di-vêrsé-city, Voices de la Luna, the Texas Poetry Calendar, the San Antonio Express-News, The Ocotillo Review, and Poetry on the Move. He now co-facilitates Gemini Ink’s Open Writer’s Lab.
