Pondering the heavens in August

I have a new friend joining me in the hollow when I mow. It’s a small bird called an Eastern Phoebe, and she is lightning fast, waiting patiently on a dead branch for me to stir up insects and, when I do she hawks low to the ground, feeding, and returning to the dead branch. It’s an extraordinary show and, sometimes when returning to her branch, she swoops with inches of my hat, simply letting me know she’s there I suppose. I shall miss her come winter when she travels to Texas or Mexico.

This column-writing thing is a mystery to me. I’m clearly not one to reach out to others, even when I need help, but good people reach out to me often, thanking me for whatever it is that I am doing. I don’t engage in social media, I do not carry a cellular telephone, and only a few folks know my landline number; consequently pretty much every week I receive a handwritten letter in the mail. That’s correct: handwritten. Reading and rereading the missives does my failing heart good. Sometimes I cry.

I first dated my wife in 1967 and, during the years that we were in different places, we traded letters: and I miss them, deeply, achingly. She was brilliant and wrote wonderful letters to the man who likely didn’t deserve her. I have read that there was one invention Thomas Edison never quite accomplished, a telephone to the afterlife. On the surface such a thing sounds a bit looney, however, I love the concept, the notion that we can dial up someone no longer with us. Imagine asking Mom about all of those things you only thought about after her passing. Or I could call my wife, though it might be horribly sad and selfish on my part. I don’t really know.

Perhaps it’s best to leave the dead alone, leave them to whatever presence, whatever existence, they enjoy. And perhaps it’s best to leave not just the dead, but the past as well encased in amber, instead opening our eyes to the brightness of an August afternoon, back wet with sweat and deciding that, whether we truly wish to or not, we must move on.

Out here on clear nights I can place a chair on my drive, lean back, and luxuriate in the light of a thousand stars. The Milky Way is clearly visible overhead, the Big Dipper hangs above the house, insects by the score chirp all night, and occasional yelps from the deep woods cause my heart to pause. A few days back a friend joined me to relive a summer childhood memory. For me, it was lying on my back in my parents’ backyard and, for her it was lying on a dock on a northern lake, looking up, watching the Perseid meteor showers etching light across an August sky. I won’t say it was a disappointment but my friend announced that it was not ‘showers,’ but Perseid meteor ‘sprinkles.’ We laughed.

You can feel your own insignificance when looking up at a summer sky, knowing that the light we see coming from stars began its journey some 10,000 years ago, just now arriving here; so we know that the stars we see are in exactly the same positions when ancient mariners pulled out sextants to let the stars guide them across vast oceans, riding the night, sailing on midnight waters, heading for home where someone loves them.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. His book “The Iowa State Fair” is available from the University of Iowa Press.