Have telescope, and imagination, and you can travel the solar system. |
Pale moonlight steamed as the fields exhaled breaking out in the sweat of a cold winter's day and clammy black branches looked like crazing on the glazed disk of the darkened sky above the sudden squawk and flutter of a distraught pheasant tears through the silken rustle and scuff of little animals rabbits startle and freeze their ears acute, twitch and flick a badger pauses in it's progress shadowing the sparse hedgerows in search of supper something small and soft and unsuspecting such as scurries and squeaks as it seeks fruits and seeds and shelter from the top of a hill quiet and still a telescope sweeps the sky settles first on Venus big and bright in the early night then traverses the moon, tracing the mare imbrium and the mare humorum with care and gumboots takes a ringside seat for spectacular Saturn or stares in awe at the nebula in Orion an amateur astronomer with a universe to play in oblivious to the irritations of cold wind and wet grass consulting star maps by torchlight and sipping from a flask of rather stewed tea feet in the damp grass and mind in the cosmos |