To Actually See the Sky Again!

Took the dog out one last time tonight and was surprised to actually see stars amidst the drone of traffic on I-70 and Maryland 75. Didn't I write about that in one of my first short stories, alluding to Robert Frost's lesser-known (and rather nihilistic, which somehow seems quaint approaching 40, although amazingly I got carded for a 6-pack of Shiner Hefeweizen tonight! ) poem, "Desert Places."

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Yes one more data point (as if all the white people didn't weren't enough) that we are actually back in "the country." Well, that and that the lack of the detergent-like smell that was so pervasive in Chicagoland. Like you were standing next to a dryer-vent. The air smelled like that.