Do you believe in ghosts?
The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest. (Vonnegut once said that.)
Such a big place is, of course, made up of many things we believe we understand. (I just said that.)
According to our frighteningly limited science, light is the fastest of all those things. Even so, it still takes the (allegedly) fastest thing of all something like 8 minutes to reach Earth from the nearest star.
Reminder: The “nearest star” is better known as “the sun.”
Go ahead, gaze up at the sun. What you see is how it looked like 8 minutes ago. You’re accepting warmth from a memory; you’re tanning yourself in the past.
What about all the more distant stars? Those big enough — luminous enough — to be seen by mere human eyes? We see what they looked like perhaps (wait for it) 10 or 15 thousand years ago. That glow we see (or perhaps think we see) was originally generated just after the last Ice Age.
Back when cave painting was trending.
Back when the fertile crescent was still fertile.
That shine we write poems about? It’s merely a memory. It may also be a ghost… You see, some of those stars are dead — imploded long ago, swallowed up into a black hole. Each black hole, however, can offer a glimmer of just enough hope to trust that our wishes will come true.