Mystery of Meteors

I discovered this poet today. I am so delighted to have done so. This is Eleanor Lerman. 

 

Mystery of Meteors

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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 see 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 watched 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 council 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

 

-from The Mystery of Meteors by Eleanor Lerman