night-sky

With my naked eye, on nights the moon climbs slowly, sometimes so dusted with rust and rose, brown, and gold tones that it nearly drips earth colors and seems intimately braided with Earth, it feels close, part of this world, a friend. But through the telescope, the moon seems- ironically- farther away_the gray-white moon in a sea of black, its surface in crisp relief, brighter than ever before. I am struck too, by the scene__ absolute silence.

When I lie back and close my eyes, this farthest lip of beach right next to the end of the ocean feels like being up close to an enormous breathing being, the bass drum surf thump reverberating through the sand. Living out here with no lights, alone, you would indeed become sensitive to seasons, rhythms, weather, sounds- right up next to the sea, right up under the sky, like lying close to a lover__ skin to hear blood and breath and heartbeat.

What are you thinking of discovering?"Moomintroll cleared his throat and felt very proud. "Oh, everything," he said. "Stars, for example!"Snufkin was deeply impressed."Stars!" he exclaimed. "Then I must come with you. Stars are my favorite things. I always lie and look at them before I go to sleep, and wonder who is on them and how one could get there. The sky looks so friendly with all those little eyes twinkling in it.

How strange it was, I thought, that when the tiny though thousandfold beauties of the Earth disappeared and the immeasurable beauty of outer space rose in the distant quiet splendor of light, man and the greatest number of other creatures were supposed to be asleep! Was it because we were only permitted to catch a fleeting glimpse of those great bodies and then only in the mysterious time of a dream world, those great bodies about which man had only the slightest knowledge but perhaps one day would be permitted to examine more closely? Or was it permitted for the great majority of people to gaze at the starry firmament only in brief, sleepless moments so that the splendor wouldn't become mundane, so that the greatness wouldn't be diminished?

The fires of nightthrough distance danceghosts who still know how to sing

at night i loved her at night i waited under the tarp at night i watched her looking up at the stars dreaming of a better time to watch me

I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia

Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.

Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.

Hope is a helium balloon. It is a wish lantern set out into the dark sky of night.

Sometimes while gazing at the night's sky, I imagine stars looking down making wishes on the brightest of us.

There were nights for instance, especially in August, where the view of the full moon from the top of the Acropolis hill or from a high terrace could steal your breath away. The moon would slide over the clouds like a seducing princess dressed in her finest silvery silk. And the sky would be full of stars that trembled feebly, like servants that bowed before her. During those nights under the light of the August full moon, the city of Athens would become an enchanted kingdom that slept lazily under the sweet light of its ethereal mistress.

i will forever be collidingwith a billion unnamedundiscovered stars, each of uson our own orbital paths.

I do not want to sleepfor fear I might miss the twinkle of the brightest starfor fear I may never knowhow the moon glimmers, in the darkest hour.

I wonder at the starry pattern in the skyAre they little pieces of moon which want to fly..?

Maybe life is all about twirling under one of those midnight skies, cutting a swathe through the breeze and gently closing your eyes.

let me diefrom having being drunk onindigo skies, my liver...overflowing with stars.

The rocking of the boat by the waves was soothing but unknown. The men on the shore were asleep. Not the twelve-year-old, though. He shifted and lay on his back and decided to look up at the sky. What he saw took him by surprise. He was basically a city kid. He had never really seen the night sky for what it is. As he stared up at millions of stars, he was filled with a dread he had never known before.I was just a boy, I said to my wife in a hotel room in Cornwall. I was just a boy on a boat in the universe.