Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Meteor Showers

Fireball from the 1998 Leonid meteor shower on Nov. 17,
Photo by astrophotographer Lorenzo Lovato, 1998. (SPACE.com)

"The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark.... Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas—a whole grammar made of light, 
for words too hard to speak.” 
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me                     
in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.” 
― Jack London

“Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, then to burn like a meteor and leave no dust.” 
-- Virginia Woolf

The November Meteors by Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, 1868

Midweek Motif ~ Meteor Showers

According to Wikipedia: 

A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky.  . . .   The first great storm in the modern era was the Leonids of November 1833. One estimate is over one hundred thousand meteors an hour,^[3] but another, done as the storm abated, estimated in excess of two hundred thousand meteors during the 9 hours of storm^[4] over the entire region of North America east of the Rocky Mountains.  

Imagine that!
or have you actually seen them?  

(In November, because the single point of origin is 

in the constellation Leo, they are called the Leonids.)  

Your Challenge:  Employ a meteor shower or a meteor in your new poem, whether historical, fantastical or metaphorical.  

Old woodcuts depicting 1833 Leonid meteor storm.

November’s Leonid meteor shower By Deborah Byrd 

in ASTRONOMY ESSENTIALS  11/15/2017 EarthSky

Here are all the details you need for 

2017’s Leonid meteor shower, 
November 17 and 18.

The Meteorite

C.S. Lewis

Among the hills a meteorite

Lies huge; and moss has overgrown,

And wind and rain with touches light

Made soft, the contours of the stone.

Thus easily can Earth digest

A cinder of sidereal fire,

And make her translunary guest

The native of an English shire.

Nor is it strange these wanderers

Find in her lap their fitting place,

For every particle that's hers

Came at the first from outer space.

All that is Earth has once been sky;

Down from the sun of old she came,

Or from some star that travelled by

Too close to his entangling flame.

Hence, if belated drops yet fall

From heaven, on these her plastic power

Still works as once it worked on all

The glad rush of the golden shower.

🌠

August 12 in the Nebraska Sand Hills Watching the Perseids Meteor Shower

 TWYLA HANSEN

In the middle of rolling grasslands, away from lights,

a moonless night untethers its wild polka-dots,

the formations we can name competing for attention

in a twinkling and crowded sky-bowl.

Out from the corners, our eyes detect a maverick meteor,

a transient streak, and lying back toward midnight

on the heft of car hood, all conversation blunted,

we are at once unnerved and somehow restored.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

2003: The Leonid meteor shower

The Tyger

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 

In what distant deeps or skies. 

Burnt the fire of thine eyes? 

On what wings dare he aspire? 

What the hand, dare seize the fire? 

And what shoulder, & what art, 

Could twist the sinews of thy heart? 

And when thy heart began to beat, 

What dread hand? & what dread feet? 

What the hammer? what the chain, 

In what furnace was thy brain? 

What the anvil? what dread grasp, 

Dare its deadly terrors clasp! 

When the stars threw down their spears 

And water'd heaven with their tears: 

Did he smile his work to see? 

Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 

Tyger Tyger burning bright, 

In the forests of the night: 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

🌠

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ The Flower: Rose)