OUTSKIRTS

Last night at that point when light had almost faded and the first stars oh yeah you don’t have to remind me it’s something I know already but don’t remember how I know that the ones that blink are the stars and the ones that glow steadily are planets anyway when they began to show themselves in the summer sky, I was riding my little folding bicycle along a lonely farm road outside Dixon, and I began to think about some English words and phrases we use to talk about the places outside but near cities and town, words like outskirts, fringe, suburb, edge of town and because there were no street lights where I was riding remembering something I read once about the outskirts of the universe so I squinted and decided I would head for it and imagined my bike, like that famous scene in the movie with the alien on the bicycle with the moon in the background and even though I knew at age seventy-three it was probably much too childish a game to be playing with myself pardon the expression I kept on riding and my thoughts took me past God and the outskirts of earth and beyond Pluto which much to my dismay has been reduced to something less than a planet and on out beyond our solar system past Alpha Centauri also known by whom I haven’t the faintest idea Rigil Kentaurus or Rigil for short or Toliman what’s that about anyway going on past Alpha Centauri and the entire constellation of Centaurus watching out for black holes which was pretty tricky where I was riding considering there were likely pot holes I couldn’t see on Pitt School Road and banking a little to the left of Proxima Centauri heading on toward Andromeda I suddenly remembered that ninety percent of the universe is anti-matter and I wasn't ready to ride into that so I made a u-turn and headed back for Sycamore Street and the place where I would sleep for the night.