When I Learned the Sun Is a Star
by Laura Sobbott Ross
for Patty
That winter semester, we aligned the night sky
with notes we took in our astronomy course.
Each compass point, a glittery snapshot
of newly named constellations.
Somewhere beyond the campus grounds
pieced in snow, whorled the Milky Way,
bookmarked and vastly out of context.
Earth-girls, we wore our bathing suits
underneath goose-down coats and sweatpants.
The indoor pool, a volumetric sphere
far easier to fathom than the sky. Nothing infinite—
just an accommodating gravity in aqua blue.
Buoyant, we soared from one wall to another—
seventy-two laps equal to the distance of a mile.
Light years away, zillions of tiny suns jangled
like lanterns far from where we floated—
bodies in motion, like anything with a life force,
the simple physics of pushing through.
I am not sure I’d been listening before
if anyone had told me the sun was a star.
This altered my perspective—
moony girl with frozen hair making her way back
to her rented room in the dorm, I found myself
looking up, contemplating the enormity of it all—
planets orbiting suns, moons orbiting planets.
Nothing in stasis— cosmic dust itself,
swirling and potent. Our own star,
loosely illuminating the moon, the walkways
perilous with ice. My eyes, stinging with chlorine,
smeared auras around everything that shined.
That winter semester, we aligned the night sky
with notes we took in our astronomy course.
Each compass point, a glittery snapshot
of newly named constellations.
Somewhere beyond the campus grounds
pieced in snow, whorled the Milky Way,
bookmarked and vastly out of context.
Earth-girls, we wore our bathing suits
underneath goose-down coats and sweatpants.
The indoor pool, a volumetric sphere
far easier to fathom than the sky. Nothing infinite—
just an accommodating gravity in aqua blue.
Buoyant, we soared from one wall to another—
seventy-two laps equal to the distance of a mile.
Light years away, zillions of tiny suns jangled
like lanterns far from where we floated—
bodies in motion, like anything with a life force,
the simple physics of pushing through.
I am not sure I’d been listening before
if anyone had told me the sun was a star.
This altered my perspective—
moony girl with frozen hair making her way back
to her rented room in the dorm, I found myself
looking up, contemplating the enormity of it all—
planets orbiting suns, moons orbiting planets.
Nothing in stasis— cosmic dust itself,
swirling and potent. Our own star,
loosely illuminating the moon, the walkways
perilous with ice. My eyes, stinging with chlorine,
smeared auras around everything that shined.
Laura Sobbott Ross has worked as a teacher and writing coach for Lake County Schools in Central Florida and was named Lake County's poet laureate. Her poems have appeared in Meridian, 32 Poems, Blackbird, Main Street Rag, National Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of six poetry books.