Copernicus notes
In the tree tops next to Mallot Hall, a green leaf twists in the autumn wind and blinks under the blue bowl of Kansas sky, dark then light. From behind double-paned office windows Boone Kokerson watches the leaf, watches the wind turn in the trees, leaves like schools of frightened fish flashing in the sun. He breathes deep the stale office air, sets fingertips to windowpane then turns to his desk. Notes in piles, fake parchment stacks. Nicolas Copernicus’ tight script hugging close the illustrated orbits of planets. Heavenly spheres disproved. The retrograde motion of Mars.
He sits at his desk and clatters a few words on his computer, thick fingers unused to frail keys. Until the budget cuts he had scribbled all things longhand, collected the yellow notepads and carried them with some ceremony to one of two secretaries down the hall. Now he types all things himself, the sighs and eyerolls of student assistants not worth the trouble.
He shuffles through some of the Copernicus notes, semicircles and ellipses jotted on old parchment. Since his graduate days Boone has been fascinated by the astronomer and once penned a brief book to some acclaim. A slip of a thing, a gesture that explained Copernicus’ fascination with the red planet’s wonky orbit and why that, above all else, had placed the sun in the center of the solar system. He’s published nothing since.
