perseid shower

I posted the poem below in 2012, I see. It also appeared in Dark Mountain 4. I'm reposting it because it's that time of year – if the sky's clear in August, you may stand in a shower of falling stars – well, meteors, the Perseids, from the Perseus constellation, which reach a peak round about now.

Yesterday, under the yellow August full moon (the hunter's moon??), we stood outside and four meteors streamed across the sky in their dying glory.

The perspective – the vastness, and yet the reminder that everything, even stars, is/are transient – was useful to me in a time when the suffering of the world and other people's troubles (not to mention the deadlines I need to meet before I leave for France), can be overwhelming in moments.

~~~

Perseids

The Lion stretches paws to the edges of the land, roars towards Orion. I so want to be drenched in starlight; imagine finding the timeless in the realm of time. 

Must have been August, full moon, one night in Penwith we took the road that joins shore to moorland and drove through that downpour of falling stars – their lucence against the midnight blue a kind of covenant, a promise. Stop the car, you said, and we climbed and lay on its roof, toes towards the ocean, in a shower of light, shivered into brightness.

Those were the days before the dying started. There are benisons of pain as well as joy.  

I think how easily we forget to look up, remember where we come from, where home lies.

© Roselle Angwin