What If We Were Alone?

What If We Were Alone? What if there weren't any stars? What if only the sun and the earth circled alone in the sky? What if no one ever found anything outside this world right here? -- no Galileo could say, "Look -- it is out there, a hint of whether we are everything." Look out at the stars. Yes -- cold space. Yes, we are so distant that the mind goes hollow to think it. But something is out there. Whatever our limits, we are led outward. We glimpse company. Each glittering point of light beckons: "There is something beyond." The moon rolls through the trees, rises from them, and waits. In the river all night a voice floats from rock to sandbar, to log. What kind of listening can follow quietly enough? We bow, and the voice that falls through the rapids calls all the rocks by their secret names. - William Stafford