I’ve been waking early and walking along the coastline to see the sunrise most mornings. The other day it was still dark as I left our house and there was a full moon with a star (or planet) shining brightly at its side. Even when I got to the shore, as the eastward sky turned pink, the star was still there in the west. But then the sun rose with its brilliant light. The full moon remained, of course, but the star had vanished. Later that day, I read this poem by Galway Kinnell.

 Daybreak

On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky
and enormous, imperfect stars
moved across it as slowly
as the actual stars cross heaven.
All at once they stopped,
and, as if they had simply
increased their receptivity
to gravity, they sank down
into the mud, faded down
into it and lay still, and by the time
pink of sunset broke across them
they were as invisible
as the true stars at daybreak.

All this reminds me of these iconic words of Wendell Berry: “I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax themselves with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.”

It is reassuring to remember that day-blind stars might vanish in the brightness of the garish sun. But they are still there. Just as we are here even though at times our light feels diminished and our voices unheard.