M.A. Schaffner
Leonids in Arlington
The city fogged the night sky and this night
a full moon hazed it further so even
without clouds the stars made a thin layer
sometimes underscored by planes and sometimes
pierced by satellites. We watched a small patch
bordered by the top of our cypress walls,
shielded from streetlights, security lights
and the odd insomniac window pane.
Here the meteors flared and evanesced
at varied distances and times; we'd talk
after a minute of nothing but then
suddenly and literally ooh and ah.
Privileged to know this was not an attack,
our murmured conversation nonetheless
underscored a sense of fragility.
It is only air up there, after all,
that keeps us from the ambient debris,
and beyond that only hazardous void.
Slowly the sun faded out the viewing;
our neighbor's bathroom light came on. Car doors
crunched, engines started as all around us,
became abruptly industrious as
the planet rose for what we all call work,
and sky took on the blue of office walls.
a full moon hazed it further so even
without clouds the stars made a thin layer
sometimes underscored by planes and sometimes
pierced by satellites. We watched a small patch
bordered by the top of our cypress walls,
shielded from streetlights, security lights
and the odd insomniac window pane.
Here the meteors flared and evanesced
at varied distances and times; we'd talk
after a minute of nothing but then
suddenly and literally ooh and ah.
Privileged to know this was not an attack,
our murmured conversation nonetheless
underscored a sense of fragility.
It is only air up there, after all,
that keeps us from the ambient debris,
and beyond that only hazardous void.
Slowly the sun faded out the viewing;
our neighbor's bathroom light came on. Car doors
crunched, engines started as all around us,
became abruptly industrious as
the planet rose for what we all call work,
and sky took on the blue of office walls.
Page(s) 8
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