6 am Meteor Showers           

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The single note of beauty, that flash point of coming and going, when night leaves its hold turning it over

to the nearing sun. Not a hand over where fingers suggestively touch, more a graceful retiring dark, the subtle courtesan elegantly backing out leaving only scent on the open air.

 

Summer in this coastal pueblo brings heat and humidity so fervent even rocks and trees, windows and

railings sweat to its sultry pace of months as July steps into the cooker of August and melts into the simmer of September then roils into the final boil of October, when the burner is finally turned off just before it spills over, and, we slowly cool, soon after in the count of three days, autumn pulls up alongside winter’s edge, bringing winds that could cut a slice of mountain if were made of dough.

 

But at 5 am this morning a meteor shower, flying fast and furious against the growing light, seemed

resistant to stepping off center stage, as sunbeams with their cartwheel colors stole the spectacle, displaying their hunger for audience. I think their face-off woke me. Instantly awake and alert as if I’d never slept, I snuck from bed out to the moving sky that was holding its breath between dark and morning.

 

Remind me, please, to say thank you tonight when the earth’s theatre lights dim and the show begins.

 

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© Sharon Lopez Mooney, "6 am Meteor Showers" originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, Issue #26, Ed. Robert Paul Cesaretti, Fairfax, CA, Spring 2021, print and online: http://ginoskoliteraryjournal.com/images/ginosko26.pdf