How Constellations Are Made by Joseph Carrabis

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Cool air raises the hairs on my arms, back, and legs. The air

steams, rises, fogs, and sunlight diffuses to the point

my eyes ache from the brightness. Cool air enters my

chest, fills my lungs, grows hot, and I exhale making

more steam.

A voice from the setting sun whispers in my thoughts. "Drop

down, go lower. You'll see better."

Fall forward until my forelegs touch the ground. Was I

supposed to walk this way? My forelegs are made for

holding, crushing, not moving me through snow

capped lands.

But lower, I can see the horizon, a cloudless line of

darkening blue, jagged, skirting distant mountain tops.

Stars rise above, waiting.

Roasted meat. That smell. And laughter.

Food. The old hunger rises in me.

Crackling of the fire. A light. The fog lifts. It is night.

No horses whinny. No pack animals grumble.

I stand, prepare to crash into the camp, risk the flames, tear

the haunch from the spit, run into the night with its

juices greasing my flews.

A man, one of several, sees me. Rises.

But does not lift his weapon, his arrows, his knife.

Only stands.

A hunter, this one, the smell of the kill fresh on him. A

brother to me.

He looks at the fire, at the turning meat roasting there,

listens to the popping of fat as it drips into the flames.

He takes his knife, cuts off a piece, kneels, reaches forward.

"Come. Take it."

Another holds his hand back. "There's not enough."

"There will be. His people and ours, together, can make

many hunts."

The other pulls his hand back. The first reaches forward,

drops his take a paw's length from me.

I bare my fangs. Growl.

"No. None of that. I offer as a friend. You can take as a

friend or not at all."

Others raise their bows.

"No, put those down. Not here, not now."

I take. He speaks quietly to me. Others watch. I lick my lips,

watch the fire.

He spreads his roll, pats it.

"Here. Beside me. Forever."

I lay, rest, wary, listening, let him know when danger nears.

He shares his food, his bed.

I walk beside him.

A friend in eternity, a friend in the night.

(-end-)

Bio

Joseph Carrabis told stories to anyone who would listen starting in childhood, wrote his first stories in grade school and started getting paid for his writing in 1978. His work history includes periods as a long-haul trucker, apprentice butcher, apprentice coffee buyer/broker, lumberjack, Cold Regions researcher, mathematician, semanticist, semioticist, physicist, educator, Chief Data Scientist, Chief Research Scientist, Chief Neuroscience Officer, Neuromarketer-in-Residence, and Chief Research Officer. Prior to becoming a full-time author, Joseph sat on several advisory boards including the Center for Multicultural Science and the Journal of Cultural Marketing Strategy. He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Society for New Communications Research; an Annenberg Fellow at the University of Southern California's Center for the Digital Future; Director of Predictive Analytics, Center for Adaptive Solutions; and was an original member of the NYAS/UN's Scientists Without Borders program. He held patents covering mathematics, anthropology, neuroscience, and linguistics based on a technology he created in his basement and from which he created an international company. He retired from corporate life and now spends his time writing fiction and non-fiction based on his experiences. His work appears regularly in anthologies and his own novels. You can often find him snuggling with his wife, Susan. Learn more about him here and his work here. Please join Joseph on RoundTable 360 where creatives from across disciplines talk, share, and learn.

Author's note

Orion was the first constellation I learned. Not sure why. Perhaps because mythologies fascinated me as a child, and more likely because I always found comfort in the dark, night skies. There is a quiet grace, a peace, a steadfastness to them from our vantage point on Earth. Not so in the Deep Sky, of course, and that knowledge came much later. Interestingly, that knowledge never displaced my comfort in the sky's embrace. And when I learned soon after that Orion had a dog? So now each year I wait for Orion's Fall arrival, wish him safe journeys on his Spring departure, and wrote this poem to remind me I will walk with him soon.