Meteor Shower

To see the sky spit out a mouthful of stars
You have to go someplace dark--
A cemetery, perhaps, where you and your husband
Stand on a wet, grassy knoll
(With a buck who is as surprised
By your appearance at 4:30
In the morning as you are by his)--
All to watch stars tumble through the clouds.

Do you see anything? Your husband asks.
Do you? You're not sure.
Maybe that really was a
Flash of light you just saw,
A star skittering across the night,
The thing you had hoped to see
As you stand out here with a deer
In the dark on a knoll in the cemetery.

As any rate, the experience is
Different than you'd wanted it to be.
You wanted to be bathed in light and sparks
And feel the dust of the stars themselves
Settle on your hair like sunlight
On a January day--cold heat.
Still, you'll take that flash of light
You thought you saw and own it--
Your souvenir of the meteor shower.