Radiance

The Roman candle of a yard light caramelizes the old snow. The glow trespasses the dark hold of December, dimming the view of the night sky with its winter triangle a boy strains to see through the haze, as he lets his jacket hang open, unzipped to the cold. He knows to return through the black cleft between buildings, below electric wires that seem to carry a little train of snow on their slim rails, where he throws the switch that shuts off the bulb on its pole, that opens the dome to a blast of stars in outer space, to the pinpoint of Jupiter, to the constellation of Orion hunting the Great Bear that the boy follows to find a smudge of gray–he can gaze through that peep hole to another galaxy also spangled with radiance from stars that traveled two and a half million light years before appearing as a signal in the rod cells of his eyes that pass impulses through neurons and nerves to his brain that creates images. He draws in a sharp breath, the high voltage power box of his chest hot and humming.