a love letter to Orion

Dear Orion,

You are the harbinger of winter. You hang above me now, pre-dawn in the Texas sky, just as you did when I was a kid waking early for horse shows or walking to the bus stop in the cold, dark Colorado winter.  Here in the Hill Country, when you finally re-appear on the horizon at sunset in late late summer, I am assured that winter will arrive.  Perhaps we will have no real Autumn, like this year with no rain and still blazing heat, but you promise that winter will indeed be here again. 

This morning, the four points of your knees and shoulders make a frame for your hunter’s body.  The arrow-straight line of your belt crosses your hips, three stars horizontal, and three smaller stars vertical to make your knife.  Always your left shoulder gleams red with a nebula. A star factory: from your body stars are born.  I envision them coming forth, spilling out in waterfall of sparks, each flying to its new position in the universe.

As the day begins to dawn and you fade from my vision, I love that you are here now, above me, birthing light and conjuring up cooler temperatures. 

Which of your points will be the last one visible this morning?

Your knife is already gone; now your left knee disappears.  Your belt and right shoulder are next to go, only the left shoulder nebula and right knee glow faintly in the growing light, so faintly I would not know they were part of you had I not had my gaze fixed on your position in the sky.  Now only the knee is there and only because it is hovering over the top of an oak, my earthly point of reference. I glance down to make a note in my journal.  When I look up, you are gone.

Harbinger: from ‘albergue,’ to lodge. One sent ahead to arrange lodging.

Nebula: a luminous region in the interstellar medium consisting of ionized, neutral or molecular hydrogen and cosmic dust.