While organizing books, I rediscover
two small field guides, Track Finder:
a guide to mammal tracks of eastern
North America and Constellation Finder:
a guide to patterns in the night sky
with star stories from around the world.
Booklets, same size and shape, saddle-
stitched, written by the same author.
From now on I will think of animal
tracks in the damp garden or across
the snowy yard —deer, rabbit,
raccoon, skunk, vole, fox, possum—
as constellations, and of constellations
as the glittering tracks of animals
traveling the night sky, some
perfect walkers, some imperfect.
Perhaps, long ago, someone tracking
a deer in moonlit snow, each track
holding its little cup of heart-shaped
darkness, paused to look up at the night
sky, and saw the patterns there as equal
and opposite, and this was the way
the stars began to get their stories.
I place the guides side-by-side
on the shelf. The sliver of human
history fits between.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 6.
Daye Phillippo taught English at Purdue University and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Literary Mama, Shenandoah, Presence, Cider Press Review, Great Lakes Review, Natural Bridge, The Windhover, and others. She lives and writes in a creaky, old farmhouse on twenty rural acres in Indiana. Her poem “Missing Parts” was awarded second place in the New York Encounter Poetry Contest in 2021. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her debut full-length collection, Thunderhead, was published by Slant Books in 2020.
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