It was early evening, the sky a deepening blue,
and we had settled in at a harbor-side table
which a waiter often visited with trays of drinks.
The last thing on my mind was astronomy,
but at one point I tilted back my head
and beheld scattered above me the early stars
of a new hemisphere and, directly overhead,
the twinkling points of the Southern Cross.
What a relief after a lifetime of the Big Dipper
with its odd angles, its bent ladle—
more like a rhomboid on a coat hanger to my eye.
But there is no mistaking the four points of a cross.
The waiter set down another tray of glasses,
and I pictured the scales and the crab,
the altar and the archer, the furnace and the ram,
the small and large dog, the large and small bear—
so many, even if there were only two stars in the sky,
we would have configured them long ago
and lain there staring up on ancient moonless nights
(a whiff of woodsmoke in the air)
contemplating the wonderful simplicity
of Tips of the Horns, the Staring Frog,
or maybe we would just call them the Twins—
that one the boy, and off to the side, his enchanting sister.