Astronaut

One dark moonless night, clear sky, bright stars, no earth, from the far end of the long pier the woods and beach were indistinguishable in the impenetrable darkness. The lake water was still like glass as billions of atoms danced in the windless silence. I looked down into the water at the floating stars, and for a moment beyond human consciousness, weightless and lost somewhere in the middle of the universe, with no up or down, no East or West, I became only center and reached for the stars all around.