matthewclind

Greetings on the Pumpkinvine from Andromeda

With the promise of Leonid’s celestial show

I strap my lawn chair on back

And cautiously pedal along the trail,

Double-darkened from midnight and forest,

To the hill (you know the one);

There, to unfold my chair,

And lie back, draped in blanket

And filled with expectation

(Like that night, barely four years old,

When, suddenly awake,

I pad from my bed to stand

Before the picture window

And watch the Pennsylvania hillsides

Wrapped in the moon’s silvered net).

Now, a streak across the northern sky,

And another, and the spectacle unfolds.

But then, my eye is drawn

To a more distant drama:

Above, Cassiopeia, with Schedar,

The Queen’s fiery heart,

Points the way to that dim spiral of light,

Celestial rays that sprang

from one trillion stars

Two and a half million years ago:

Andromeda.

Did they, like Pheidippides,

Intend a message—

As they hurled into the

Surrounding abyss of space,

While the first of our genus

Stepped out onto this Earth;

As they hummed through the vast Intergalactic void,

While woolly mammoths stood staring from this hill;

As they neared the outer reaches of the Milky-Way,

While the Potawatomi tended their maize in the field below;

And as they finally streak through

Our November sky

While I lie by this winding path—

To pierce my eyes with their ancient cipher

On this distant alien soil.

Notes:

The Leonid meteor shower is an annual event, usually in mid-November, when the earth passes through the trailings of the Temple-Tuttle comet. The comet circles the sun every 33 years, producing at times spectacular meteor storms (the next is due in 2034).

Andromeda, the closest galaxy to the Milky Way, is 2.5 million light-years from Earth, one of the few that can be seen, on a good night, with the naked eye.

It can be located by finding Cassiopeia, one of the easiest-seen constellations in the northeastern October sky. Cassiopeia, queen of Ethiopia and wife of King Cepheus, was punished by the gods for her boastfulness and is forever rotated upside-down on her throne. Her heart, the bright star Schedar, points the way to the smudge of Andromeda, which consists of over one trillion stars (4 times as many as our Milky Way).

Pheidippides is the runner who, in 490 bc, brought news to Athens of the Greek victory over Persia at the Battle of Marathon, thus inspiring the modern marathon race. At that time, Andromeda’s present November light was still 2,500 light-years distant, but zipping through our Milky Way.

I remember that November night on the trail being rather magical, and it took me back to another mystical experience from my early childhood. But the awe I felt as I watched Andromeda that night: how ancient this light! I imagined those photons, streaking across the intergalactic void as our earth’s history evolved; and I wondered, did that light spring forth two and a half million years ago with an intent or a purpose for our distant planet? Did they sing a traveling song together, or cheer each other on as they began their celestial journey, before hunkering down in silence for their epic crossing? Or, as in Psalm 19, was their whole journey a two-and-a-half-million-year symphony?

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