But tonight, at least, I'm remembering the Ferris wheel on the fair grounds, its girders lit by ten dozen lemon-yellow incandescent bulbs, writing huge, desolate zeroes in the late August night. Light in motion I remember clearly. I can see the white-hot glow of furnaces through a glass factory window, the probing gleam of headlights sliding across the ceiling as a car turns down my old street. There's an old trick used to prove that light travels as a wave- close up, light shining through a keyhole will just take the shape of a keyhole, but if the beam travels a greater distance, it refracts, and reveals the gaps and fissures of darkness hidden within. The lights of Mercer reach me in the far-field; blurred and fractured by the long journey they've taken. Like starlight, I can't even be sure the source is still extant. But if light is a wave lapping against us; an ocean oscillating through illumination and shadow, then time is the tide, and it pulls a sea of light onto the shore, engulfing and flooding it. Then light recedes, taking with it what was left too near waves, and leaves the rest, at last, in darkness. How might we infer that the "starlight" referred to in lines 75-76 most like the narrator's memory of Mercer? O It can still be perceived although it is not there It is extremely far away in both time and distance O The initial source of the light and memory is extremely beautiful Perception of both is easiest at night time Sign out​