Orion in the winter sky

I hate the time change. I hate walking home in the dark, but I also hate that it's light when I take the dog out, which means no Orion in the morning sky. The poet Moya Cannon talks about driving back from Cloghane in her poem "Night," and seeing that constellation: "So I wasn't ready / for the dreadful glamour of Orion / as he struck out over Barr dTri gCom / in his belt of stars." Dreadful glamour... That's it exactly, what I feel when, walking in the bitter cold, I look up and see him hanging over me. Here's how the poem ends: I got out twice, leaned back against the car and stared up at our windy, untidy loft where old people had flung up old junk they'd thought might come in handy, ploughs, ladles, bears, lions, a clatter of heros, a few heroines, a path for the white cow, a swan and, low down, almost within reach, Venus, completely unfazed by the frost. Where to even start? First with her beautiful reminder that those constellations are gifts left us by our ancestors, illustrations of stories they cherished and wanted us to have. And then, in her typical fashion, that ambiguous Love, "almost within reach," and "unfazed by the frost," also left to us by our ancestors, something pure and true to itself--again this idea of dreadful glamour--but not quite where we can get to it. That, my friends, is a good poem--one that articulates something you've not quite been able to put into words and sends you off longing for something that can't be articulated.