February 15, 2013

It's so quiet tonight, dark and quiet, except for the heater running, there is silence, no birds, no cars in this middle-of-the-night hour.  When the heater stops running, the quiet makes your ears ring just to have something to listen to.  And it's so dark, no moon, low humidity, no clouds, this is as dark as it gets here, nothing to reflect back the prevalent light, so a lot more darkness.  It's odd for it to be so dark and quiet at the same time . . . 

Reading the headlines, a meteorite fell into Russia, causing windows to shatter, and a roof to collapse, and lots of video of it.  An asteroid is also passing close to earth, closer that some satellites so the scientists say.  So much excitement in one night . . . they say the meteorite and the asteroid are not related,  just coincidence.  That's a lot of coincidence for one night. 

The Mystery of Meteors 

Eleanor Lerman 

I am out before dawn, marching a small dog through a meager park

Boulevards angle away, newspapers fly around like blind white birds

Two days in a row I have not seen the meteors

though the radio news says they are overhead

Leonid's brimstones are barred by clouds; I cannot read

the signs in heaven, I cannot see night rendered into fire 

And yet I do believe a net of glitter is above me

You would not think I still knew these things:

I get on the train, I buy the food, I sweep, discuss,

consider gloves or boots, and in the summer,

open windows, find beads to string with pearls

You would not think that I had survived

anything but the life you see me living now 

In the darkness, the dog stops and sniffs the air

She has been alone, she has known danger,

and so now she watches for it always

and I agree, with the conviction of my mistakes.

But in the second part of my life, slowly, slowly,

I begin to counsel bravery. Slowly, slowly,

I begin to feel the planets turning, and I am turning

toward the crackling shower of their sparks 

These are the mysteries I could not approach when I was younger:

the boulevards, the meteors, the deep desires that split the sky

Walking down the paths of the cold park

I remember myself, the one who can wait out anything

So I caution the dog to go silently, to bear with me

the burden of knowing what spins on and on above our heads 

For this is our reward:  Come Armageddon, come fire or flood,

come love, not love, millennia of portents--

there is a future in which the dog and I are laughing

Born into it, the mystery, I know we will be saved 

It's the mystery of such occurrences that fascinates us.  I remember being home for one of the regular meteor showers, and Shawn drove us up to Trans-mountain Road to be away from much of the light.  We watched them flicker in and out, the motion of the light catching our eye for the briefest of moments, like the shower of sparks that fall when you brush against a lit cigarette, sparks out before they hit the earth.  Mystery is a good thing, if we knew everything the world would be a much narrower place.  It's what we don't know that keeps us going, the marveling, the discoveries, the wonder which we all need.  It's what saves us, all that we don't know, the questions we still have, answers yet to be found.