Close Encounter
“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
—Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Near dawn, along the edge of Fall Creek Gorge,
like a troubled memory emerging from
dense fog, the eminent astronomer
jogged suddenly in front of my car. I slammed
the brakes, but his momentum left him draped
across my hood. Time slowed. Space warped. He lay
in his running suit—maroon, as I recall—
like an unexpected gift from the cosmos.
His gaze had collapsed into a white dwarf
too faint to resolve on the lens of my Ford.
Aghast, I could envision the headline,
Sagan Collides with Ancient Galaxie.
But then, like interstellar gas compressed
into a star, he gathered himself and rose,
testing limbs for soundness like postulates.
With a nod and mouthed apology, he stepped
away and vanished into Ithaca’s
best facsimile of Horsehead Nebula.