seeing stars

i do see stars from this home finally

for months, now, the light pollution

and industrial smoke plus Oregon mist clouds have colored my night sky

blocking all but insistent planets

until early this morning – not much

past midnight – faint stars beckoned

and the shoulders and dim belt –

but no dagger - of Orion

so glad to see heaven’s lights

but sad to remember just decades

ago when the Milky Way was a bright

path above, paralleling my driveway

anthropomorphizing

sun scurrying south for the winter

inches per morning

along my eastern horizon

cold season is milder here

on the Pacific coast than i remember

growing up in America’s Midwest

when at times the snowdrifts

were far taller than i was

so i question Sol’s need to bask

in the tropics

but Science exhorts that i am

anthropomorphizing

that the sun is not a ‘he’ making

choices but a physical mass following

laws of physics resulting from its limp

or wobble left over from collision

with sister planet Theia

i guess even planet siblings

do not always play nice