Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Saturday, October 21, 2006
I Once Knew a Sparkledrop
It probably would never happen for someone else as it happened
for me, just then.
The car I was in was speeding at about seventy.
The night had already begun.
The view from the windows revealed mostly open fields.
Small cold-like clouds slept stubbornly only yards above the earth.
The black from the night part of night was not black yet,
but a mellowing deep, far off blue.
And then I, and I believe, I alone, saw this small child
run a few steps in a field, and stop
to throw a lighted sparkler into the blackening
blueness of the sky.
It glowered happily, and yet desparately;
and yet desparately,
for it would never return to the earth as the same
bright stick of joyousness as it is now.
The last gleeful sparkledrops painted the child's
attentive face with a friendly, but departing,
orange goodbye.
The image of the streak from the child's
run and throw now was taken in by the nearest mother cloud.
I remember it now-
still as if those seconds are still occurring as a full length movie.
The child smiling up, along with the sparkler;
the fading contrail evolving from white to a soft blue and slowly
melting into the air.
And then I could see no more.
A one act performance.
So fast. So very, very long.
Aug. '69