On the road the other night, just after twilight, I saw something bright in the sky toward the west. From being a life-long astronomy buff (nut), I automatically knew it wasn’t a shooting star; and from its not appearing to hang in the sky with an attached tail pointed away from where the sun had set, I knew it not to be a comet.

In the past, I had heard of, and seen a slow mail plane with bright light about that time of night, but factoring in my car’s motion, I knew this bright object to be motionless, static.

In realization, and in awful paraphrase: “What it was, was Venus!”
Thinking back to that mail plane, Earth is kind of like a mail plane, currently carrying a hefty volume of 7.5 billion “letters.” We were “posted” on our birthday, still “in transit,” and will be “out for delivery” someday.

Considering it takes our solar system about 225 million years to orbit our galaxy, my 67-year-old “arc” seems pretty miniscule by comparison; but 65 years of that trip (plus medigap) earned me “new hips for free!”

On my later grocery store trip, Venus had dropped (Earth turned) to right above a church steeple, resembling a Christmas card with Bethlehem star.
A drive downtown caused Venus to sometimes be lost behind buildings; and when it reappeared there, light pollution made it look like a “challenged” beacon.

In more rural areas, yard lights on poles also gave Venus a run for the money, but they were only brighter due to proximity. I daresay if those yard lights’ poles were extended into the vast region of interstellar space, the little, “bulby” bits of non-nuclear incandescence atop them would vanish into the eternal night, no one the wiser as to their ever having existed!

Suddenly, a bright upward streak of light appeared on my windshield. I knew it couldn’t be a meteor, since they only streak down (except in Roswell, where “they” do whatever “they” wish).

The “meteoric” streak’s yellow-green color, still glowing, and “stuck” there, finally cued its identification: splattered lightning bug guts (using this terminology, my somewhat esoteric meteor musing, just like an actual meteor, hit the ground with a thud!).
Down near the river, Venus’ light rippled in its reflection, but only due to river currents, so the old rule still holds: “Planets don’t twinkle.”

A later indignation done to our solar system’s brightest planet was committed upon it by grocery store parking lot lights, making it appear as a third- or fourth-rate star. Luna and Cecropia moths, attracted by those lights, seemed to fly circles around that brightest of planets (a matter of perspective). The moths’ colors seemed to outdo the mono-color brightness of the distant, planetary “Goddess of Love.”

My last sight of Venus that evening was through some trees. Just as the river’s currents had made the planet’s reflection seem to twinkle, so the windblown boughs seemed to make it play hide-and-seek. But, as I reiterated before: “Planets don’t twinkle” (neither do they blink on and off like a lightning bug).
Just before going to sleep, I looked out, and Venus was gone. It had passed below horizon level, but unlike a meteorite, going much “deeper.”

Since Venus had set after the sun, the sun would precede it into the sky the following morning. The planet would be lost in the sun’s brightness until sunset. After the degradation Venus has suffered from the figuratively sneering lesser things, such as parking lots, yard lights, and illuminated flying moths, at least the day ‘s “blinding insult” would be from something truly great, the star from which it was born.