PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I am not sure in which month, September or October of 1976, I discovered---through random browsing in the college library---a book about Time, as a concept, entitled Time, by Gouldsmit, Claiborne, and the editors of Life; published in the series called Life Science Library.  The book set into motion a couple of very happy coincidences.

First, on page 77, the text provides an ancient Egyptian word, wnwty which, according to the text, can be translated as Starwatcher.  I cannot remember if I first read this in the cellar of the library (where Poetry and Astronomy texts were shelved), or in my room in ----- Hall; but I certainly remember my gasp of excited delight, and the feeling of satisfied validation that swept over me.  Months earlier, on July 10th, Cerulean had helped me to find Starwatcher as my c.b. handle, and it immediately set me free from my mundane first name, the kind of repressed lifestyle that first name represented, and the overwhelmingly dismal shadow of my parents, Lloyd and Betty.  Here was validation from three?  four?  thousand years ago of the existence of that term, which was not just something I had made up in that brain beneath my wild mop of hair (far too long, according to Lloyd and Betty).  That was the same quality of validation that Cerulean had given me, on the Friday and Saturday nights of our summer, beginning with July 10th.

As I read further, I found myself becoming fascinated with the concept of the Sundial:  I was curious how one should be constructed, where placed for optimal efficiency, and how it could be adjusted, seasonally, for accuracy (if that was even possible).  Using the card catalogue (long before the internet was operable; although I suppose it was percolating in the unnetworked computers of my college, and all other colleges) to look up this subject, I came upon the card for a book of poems by Sundial, a mononymic Poet.  Unfortunately, the card was notated that the book was missing; but this browsing had given me enough knowledge to try to begin an amateur, but very enthusiastic search for more information about this Poet, from whose work and example I could derive so much encouragement.

Starward