Sky

I stepped out into the desert night a little before midnight. The sky was not simply cloudless, it was flawless, as if the atmosphere had ceased to exist. The blackness was like a freshly waxed and buffed grand piano. The stars were extra sharp, digitally enhanced. Only the brightest ones were visible, though. The glow from Yuma overpowered the background of trillions of fainter stars—even the Milky Way—leaving Gemini, Orion and Taurus standing out like a simplified diagram of the constellations. Betelgeuse winked a red-eyed, "Good evening."

I turned and looked east, north, west, straight up. The sky. Was. Massive. Well, of course it is, but the universe looks even bigger, emptier, more distant, when only a fraction of the stars can be seen. A night sky without any interfering ground light looks......busy. Closer. More intimate. Amazing in a different way.

I'm going to go out and look some more.