Long Beach Island Guidebook & Map

66 home • PORT Star Gazing by Frank Finale T onight as I sit alone on the beach listening to the sound of the waves and watching the stars, a police officer walks by to check me out. He thinks me odd and a little crazy to be sitting here in the dark just staring up at the night sky. And, I am; I'm star-crazy! Crazy with trying to grasp that each point of light—and there are billions—that make this night sky a wonder to see, is an image of an object that might not even exist anymore. The star's light takes so long to travel here that by the time we are able to see it, the star may have died. Yet its light lives on and will continue past my eyes forever through the universe. I'm literally looking at the past. The last lines of the poem, "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Walt Whitman pop into my head: Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. I grow dizzy looking up for so long, I feel outside of myself and in a cosmic state beyond the outermost frontiers of sense. Drifting in space among the stars, I have left my body and Earth. I am a pure spirit wandering the universe in the dark night. A crashing wave reaches my bare feet and jolts me back to Earth and my senses. The water is cold, but the air warm and full of the salty scent of the summer ocean. I rise from where I've been sitting, leave the beach, and walk to firmer ground. Tomorrow, I will go back to the beach with the vacationing crowd and trudge through the hot sand, around brightly colored beach umbrel- las and children digging holes to China. The scent of sunscreen lotions from well-oiled bodies will fill the air. I'll find a place near the water to spread my blanket, anchor the corners in the sand, and place my sandals on top of it along with my cooler. Then I'll walk down to the shim- mery cold ocean, immerse myself in it, taste its salt, and revel in the beautiful day that our near- est life-giving star, the Sun, has given me. u Frank Finale is the author of the books "To The Shore Once More, Volumes I & II" and "A Gull's Story, Parts 1, 2, and 3" as well as coeditor of the anthologies "Under A Gull's Wing" and "The Poets of New Jersey." "Dreamers" by Jack fusco

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