Meteor
- Meteor
That night the wind-chapped table shouted, new:fresh peach pie; bread, still warm, and consecratedby watery breezes on the shore
of a town whose very name, Springs,was a carillon that jangled newness.Talking of ancient ruins with my new friends,
I allowed the wind to rinse regrets,lights winking miles across the bay,noiseless, but for the surge of waves,
altar-white, before my feet in sand.And when we turned off lanterns to look skywardfor the Perseids (it was meteor season)
a comet rode queenly across the skybefore it arced and fell. Seeing myselfa speck in the firmament, I remembered
that rock may burn suddenly, blaze into flame,and spin for centuries before it shineswanting to be remade. Gray rock. The same
that sparkles with mica flecks by daywhen breakers slap it clean. Nothing is new.Nothing alive cannot be altered. [End Page 69]
Grace Schulman is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a recipient of the Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry. Her recent memoir is Strange Paradise: Portrait of a Marriage (Turtle Point, 2018), and her latest poetry collection is Without a Claim (Mariner, 2013). She is Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College–CUNY and editor of The Poems of Marianne Moore (Viking, 2003).
