When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me
I was 10 years old the night my dad opened the patio door, letting the cold winter air rush inside. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the stars slowly revealed themselves like tiny pinpricks in the sky. He pointed straight up, tracing invisible lines. “See those three stars?” he said. “That’s the belt. Follow it—there are his shoulders, his hips. And over there, the bow he’s holding?” From that night on, Orion became my guide, the first constellation I searched for every time I looked up at the sky.
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room
I was 13 when I saw my first meteor shower—the August Perseids. We’d driven far from the city, the mountains rising like shadows in the distance. The night was cool and still, the air crisp against my skin. Stars fell like water droplets around us, streaking the sky, racing across the dark expanse. As they fell, I fell too. I fell for the infinite space above me, for the overwhelming vastness that made me feel so small and yet so full of wonder. The stars became my first love.
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself
I’m not a mathematician. I can’t map out the distance from Alpha Centauri to the Horsehead Nebula, nor can I measure the potential for life on Europa. I don’t possess the instruments to observe Andromeda hurtling towards us in all its terrifying brilliance, nor can I calculate orbital mechanics or the trajectories of those celestial bodies that are so close to my heart.
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
But none of that matters. I only have my love for the stars—a love that transcends calculations, that exists in quiet, reverent moments beneath the open sky.
Poem by Walt Whitman
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.