Believe It or Not

Look up into the nighttime sky.

That star configuration over there,

That’s the Big Dipper, and the light

From those stars, the light you see

Right now took many thousands of

Years to get here. And so it was for

Those who saw the same arrangement

Thousands of years ago—the light

Seen at that time was the light from

Thousands of years before them.

And so it goes on and on like that

All the way back to before...well,

Let’s just say to before all those

Stars fell into place, to this day

To become what we now know as

The Big Dipper. And I imagine

Before early man invented dippers,

Before his descendants saw the

Similarities of the dipper and those

Stars configured in a visually similar

Way, the light which took thousands

Of years to get here were perhaps known

By early man merely as pinholes in the

Nighttime Sky. No one way back then had

A clue as to how old those pinholes were,

Or for that matter, which came first, the

Pinholes or the dipper? It was a bit later

On in man’s history that astronomy

Was invented to come up with some

Answers. And, in light of that which

You are seeing now, it took thousands

Of years to get here.

Chris Hanch 3-6-17