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After the Perseid Meteor Shower
If we have no peace, it is because we have
forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa
The end of summer; the end
of night shooting
her stars. Tossing them
toward us through galaxies and time
while we watched
with mouths and eyes open wide
as children
delighted by the fourth of July. Flags
waving, our chests swelling
with pride. Night
after night, thousands of meteors
dove into their dying like Palestinians
and Israelis. Like Afghanis and Iraqis.
Like those people September eleventh
in buildings and planes. Shedding
their skin. Relinquishing
time. So all the children watching
might finally see
how each of us blazes a singular trail
made of darkness and light. How
we're all falling
through this same abiding night.
Jude Rittenhouse
First published in Nimrod International Journal Awards 25.
◊ ◊ ◊
Solid Ground
This Earth cannot hold me
with its water and sand. Even
where land appears solid as granite, always,
the shifting, the wearing down comes. Parents,
whose solid arms cradled your sobbing body,
grow brittle and weak, loosen their skin, climb
out of it and go
where you'll never
again smell their scent or hold their hands
with your own. Your sister,
the prettiest one in your family,
who read Rapunzel and The Seven Swans
over and over until you had learned
to read them on your own,
who stood between you
and that mean first grade teacher,
lavished it all on husbands and children until
she slid into time's crevasses:
wrinkles where she thinks she has lost
all her beauty. This Earth
will not clench
any of us--just wash us again and again and again
until we dissolve
into light.
Jude Rittenhouse
First published in Moon Journal; reprinted in The Providence Journal.
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