A Star of Eight Points

Sitting at the long table
Under paper lantern lights
While the home-made cake’s brought out,

And the guitarist pauses
For the Happy Birthday song,
You may happen to look up

At the star-eyed summer night
And for no particular
Reason think, Sumeria.

The first symbol that you learned
Looked to you just like a star,
But not like a star you’d see,

More like the diffraction spikes
Created by nearby stars
In Webb’s deep, galactic views,

And you wonder how people
From Sumerians to kids
Drawing at kitchen tables

Could have known about that view,
Or intuited that view
Of such depth that local stars.

Never spiky to mere eyes,
Would shine long, distorted points
When the future probed the past.