For a night or two in my ninth summer
I knew the names of ten star patterns,
constellations traced by my Cool Cousin,
animated in my memory like a
Terry Gilliam film.
Now, like celluloid perversely charred,
my mind sees only familiar shapes,
with burnt-out holes where names once were,
necessitating tricks of verse
to fix them into place.
Begin with the Big Dipper, which is
just the arse-end of Ursa Major;
the bear’s long tail tells a story
in at least three Greek myths,
all of them cruel.
None explain why the bear is wearing
a girdle, but it’s marked by Dubhe on
top of the Dipper’s bowl,
and below, Merak is the mark
that points to Polaris.
Behind and below the bear is Coma Berenices,
an asterism subtle yet worth remembering,
a shimmering triangle representing the hair
that Ptolemy the Third’s queen
sacrificed to Aphrodite.
In more ancient times it was the puffy tail
of Leo, then a lion of Bert Lahr proportions,
now just a kingly cat, the stars of its mane
forming a backwards question mark,
with Regulus at its point.
Virgo could pull Leo’s tail if she wasn’t so busy
representing goddesses from Athena to Demeter,
most fitting the latter since in one hand she holds
the “Ear of Wheat”, brilliant Spica – in truth
a binary star.
Curving upward from Spica, you will soon find Arcturus
and Jack Horkheimer’s ghost says I’m doing this wrong:
you’re supposed to start up at the Big Dipper’s handle,
“Follow the Arc to Arcturus, then Straight on to Spica”;
I say: whatever works.
No matter your route, you are now in Boötes,
the broad-chested herdsman who ropes seven oxen,
the stars of The Plough (yet again, the Big Dipper);
in Latin they’re the Septentriones, but myself I prefer
the “Dipper Dogies”.
Do not confuse the Herdsman with Hercules,
whose famous heroic torso is known as the Keystone,
formed by four stars that aren’t nearly as interesting
as cluster M13, under his left armpit, holding
300,000 stars.
Below the Hero is fat Ophiucus, the Serpent Bearer,
or Asclepius, god of medicine, wielding a snake
so long it makes up two constellations, Serpens Caput,
the head, in his left hand, and the tail in his right,
Serpens Cauda.
Close enough for the snake to snatch in its mouth
is Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, whose star
Alphecca means “brightest of the broken”, a phrase
sadly apt for this tawdry gift to Ariadne,
who trusted too much.
Back to Hercules, at least let me recall his neighbors,
the Summer Triangle of Cygnus, Lyra, and Aquila.
Cygnus the swan, with Deneb the star in its tail;
Albireo the “beak star” is again two stars,
one amber, one blue.
Descending from Cygnus is the tiny harp, Lyra,
whose handle star, Vega, has the meaning of “falling”.
For the Chinese, Vega is Zhi Nü the Weaving Maid,
who falls for Niu Lang, the irresistible Cowherd,
every summer anew.
At last is Aquila, forever riding celestial thermals,
its tail star Altair, linking Deneb to Vega, gives flight
to the eagle in Arabic, connotes the Cowherd in Chinese,
but to me mainly evokes monsters, Anne Francis,
and the feckless Krell.
With luck at least some of these mnemonics will stick
in the event some young cousin needs me to teach them.
Just for my own arcane purposes, on the off chance
fairy tales don’t lie and to name is to have power
over what has slipped away.
If not, I’ll invent an appealing legend to explain my loss:
that some god hurled my memory into the heavens,
where it’s lodged somewhere mysterious,
deliberately unfindable, maybe tangled forever
in Berenice’s Hair.
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This is a poem I'm debating whether to include in a manuscript of poems on my usual themes of nature, mythology, love, and disability. It is very long, and would be the longest in the book. I thought I'd post it here as a little more free content. I can tell this is one of my older poems; it's one of those more flip pieces I mostly reserve to entertain my family, as opposed to the more esoteric word witchery I've more recently been writing. But it's still of a piece with the way my mind processes the cognitive limitations of MS. The manuscript is tentatively titled Fairy of Disenchantment.
And no, it hasn't actually helped me recognize all the constellations contained in the poem (I'd have to get a lot better at memorizing my own work) but I do remember some because of it, so it was worth the endeavor!