Awake at night
while others sleep
I watch meteors fall
in glittering array,
inscrutable patterns.
Multiple fiery tails
each minute
brush the cold black
sky, sweep the cave
of my heart.
I cannot decipher the
hieroglyph of meteors,
except one passage
repeated, descending:
In zero g, space fragments
drift, invisible to human eyes.
But mesmerized by gravity,
meteors burst through
Earth's atmosphere and blaze
a firetrail across the sky:
It takes unbearable friction
and the annihilating fall
to ignite their glory light
The secret strength of things,
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?