MaryAnn Bennett Rosberg Chicago, IL email Hear an audio version of this piece can't hear it? Pushed by Starlight Svante Arrhenius The polymath --whatever that is— said life began from micro-organisms riding on dust particles pushed by starlight. I saw one. It made semi-circles In the snow as the sun wind, helped it along, toward some nest where a bird could hatch it. Some may say it was a snowball kicked up by my own feet. But I know what I saw. (And it wasn’t sperm and egg that made us, but dust rising from our lovemaking pushed by starlight.) I had been pushed by starlight to walk away from a house that was dying-- from an uncle and aunt denying both life and death. I sat among the ice plants of the unused tennis courts in the flowered winter of a California retirement park. I watched the sunset curl like a too-fried egg, until it blackened to night. Then an owl swooped under the ‘w’ of Cassiopia And I saw where we came from and are Slowly going Dust pushed by starlight.

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