An Old Friend Returns

On a dark night, late in the fall,

starlit Autumn waning now into winter,

I wandered to the water’s edge and the expanse

of stars reflected there, not that I could

name any of them or the constellations they form,

not even the Dippers, Big and Small, the first

we are taught to recognize, but I never learned

them, too busy in youth looking up in wonder,

rapt in the sheer number and grandeur dwarfing me.

Even now, in the autumn of my own life, I feel small

looking up, still in wonder, rapt and searching,

‘till I find that one constellation I know well,

gone those summer months to the southern hemisphere,

returning now, Orion returning, looming large this night,

his three-starred belt and hunter’s bow released,

his raised arm reaching up in victory, a conqueror returning,

this long-time friend, old friend reminding me,

like a Celtic Knot, that the end of the journey

is coming home, as he is now, home to guide me

through the coming winter of ice and snow and cold,

beginning again our long journeys, away and homeward,

a threshold crossed, ending in return.