Photograph by Gerd Altmann
I light the classroom up with the map of the night sky and point out
some of the more recognizable stars clusters to the children in the room.
“This is what the sky would look like if there wasn’t any city here,” I have to explain
when the kids start interrupting my explanation, tell me
there are only one or two stars in the sky, and neither of them
are any bigger than an orange.
Later, at home, I read through my books of mythology
try to find stories and legends to connect the night sky to my lessons
find Odin’s toes and body parts floating cold and dead in the dark of space
polar bears chasing children across the night sky
scatterings of ants pushing food from one end of the sky to the other
a great river crossing an upside-down world, full of glittering fish.
