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Watching the Perseids 

Each year August eleven to thirteen 
We fly through a cloud of comet dust
In those few days 
Watching skyward patient in the dark
Shooting stars can be sporadically seen
Without warning and at random 
Smaller or larger streaks of light
Blaze fast across the sky and then are gone

I love watching the Persieds
Lying alone in a dark grassy field 
If clouds permit to gaze up at the stars 
Recognising old friends 
The Bear, Polaris, Cassiopeia 
Trying to stay vigilant 
For those unearthly wonderful flashes
As earth hoovers comet dust at fantastic speed

Some of the brightest ones burn red and gold
Even swerving in their smoking paths
Others straight pure and silver
No two ever the same
They say the same of snowflakes and it is actually true

For a fraction of a second 
The sky rips brightly then falls dark again 
Only memory gives time to think
On that brief light and form that lived and died
Was it even real or just imagined
I must wait to see another…

I guess our lives are like those shooting stars
From the cold eye of deep time
Our birth and death seem instantaneous 
Only a high speed camera would resolve
Changes in hue and path and luminance 
That from perspective of a grain of dust 
Feel like a lifetime 

I saw one shooting star that did not move
Just quickly grew in brightness then was gone
Predicted by geometry sometimes 
Meteorites come straight towards you
Not moving left or right across the sky
It might have even hit me
If not combusting in our shield of air 

How many human hearts have I burned up
Which flew as arrows straight toward my own?
Pristine unpierced and cold I lie alone
Staring in darkness at the sky 
Insects from the nighttime grass
Make forays on my skin 
Before they too are brushed away

But I can’t leave - till I see just one more
Bright signature of fire across the sphere
In this unbroken darkness,
Even the familiar stars
And planets looking back at me
Leave me always alone and incomplete 

14 Aug 2022
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