The cover shows a silhouette of a girl in a long dress
and bonnet peering through a telescope.
Vera reads about the Quaker girl who lived on an island
where her father recorded the movement of stars
to help sailors find their way. Maria Mitchell
became the first American to discover a comet,
made of dust, rock, and ice that heats up near the sun,
and streaks the sky with brief shine. As Vera reads,
her breath rises, falls, opens with a parachute’s grace.