Out for Stars: The Per Diem for August

Allan Burns, Per Diem editor for August 2012, offers this by way of introduction:

Out for Stars

“I was out for stars;
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked;
And I hadn’t been.”
Robert Frost, “Come In”

After sunset the cosmos comes out, star by star by stars. Perhaps a few planets wander among them, Saturn now doubling Spica in the West. Perhaps meteors will, in Loren Eiseley’s classic phrase, “whisper greenly overhead.” It’s a humbling drama, the scale of it. No fancy optics are required. “That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest,” Thoreau observes. A cheap notebook may prove a handy accessory. Venus has entered the Pleiades. The galaxy is breathing. Ueda defines sabi as “the concept that one attains perfect spiritual serenity by immersing oneself in the egoless, impersonal life of nature. The complete absorption of one’s petty ego into the vast, powerful magnificent universe.” If you don’t come in too soon, a haiku may lodge where out there is also in here. Thoreau again: “The stars are the apexes of what triangles!” Even in daylight, a reader can complete the triangles of these celestial-themed haiku.

—Allan Burns

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