Billion (January)

It’s one small step for a man, out the backdoor into the stars. One giant leap for mankind, the humility required learning serenity prayers. Seven fruit trees in January’s starlit garden, seventeen tomato plants, one relaxed cat: these are numerals we understand. But that dot of light above the redundant television aerial is a galaxy four billion light years away. Four seasons, four suits, four musketeers: four is something we can get our head around. Astronomy books talk of objects only 20,000 light years away, as though ‘only’ was comprehensible, reasonable. One sits with one’s billions of cells, learning differences.