The Narrator Relates Helen to the Pleiades
Meridith Gresher


“There is a cluster of stars known as the Pleiades. This word, which means the congregation of the judge or ruler, comes to us through the Greek Septuagint as the translation of the Hebrew kimah, which means the heap or accumulation.”
—The Witness of Stars, E.W. Bullinger

There is beauty, none larger than the word made flesh.
Its spirit expands between throat and tongue
ever lightening a world delivered. One small blip in the universe,
Helen could be called both more and less than the life she has accumulated.
Job says “only God can bind the beautiful.”
If Helen had been less an expert at stars and studied instead their master,
she might have dipped from sordid constellations,
sought a sisterhood of icy blue November dancers,
and known kindred near-neighbors 400 light years away.
She travels backward into deeper Chinese astronomy
and days before she understood stars could cross. In 2357 BC
records describe the Pleiades as golden bees or flying pigeons.
Helen’s brethren, the Greeks, named it seven sisters. In the 1800s
the Pleiades was center of the universe; stars revolved around her
till science proved differently. We use constellations to divide
ourselves from each other and the universe we seek inside.
I revolve around Helen. Helen understands herself differently.
She is beautiful.
She is bound.