the writers try to be astronomers

Tonight, after the reading, we walk over to the Kirkwood observatory. The stairs are rickety but we climb them; the upstairs floor is a dark wood, the cracks between planks barely visible. David Lazar wears a shiny black shirt and black leather shoes with white stitching: a cross between Lou Reed and Foucault. He is slight and his shirt picks up the light. Because of this he looks a little like a stingray. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni leads us, her jeweled bindi also twinkling, and in her excitement, the rest of her is twinkling too, and so between them, Chitra and David, it is as though we are bringing the constellations with us to look at the stars. There are a dozen of us, or so, and we take up all of the octagonal room. Nadine asks about the history of the building; I slip outside to watch the clouds move over the sky from the circular deck. The banister is ornamented. It distracts a bit from the view. Inside again I take my turn at the telescope. There in the scope is Saturn, a pale yellow marble, striated with gold. A runny egg. As I search for the fourth moon, Martha Rhodes begins to sing, “When the moon is in the Seventh House/And Jupiter aligns with Mars/Then peace will guide the planets/And love will steer the stars.” I turn away, back into the intimate crowd. This would be a good place to hold a small dance party. A waltz night. Couples turning, the roof turning, and, above, the heavens in rotation as well. Maybe someday I will write about all of this more, better. The writers looking at the stars, how Martha jokes that the poets just gaze while the fiction writers ask questions, how this fact is a secret revealed. Revealed here. In the woods of Indiana. It is a small secret, I think, like turning up a rock and finding, underneath, a snail shell.