guilted into yet another
late evening dog-walk
after too long spent
indoors and weighed down
by endless introversion
trudging an unlit path
free of the imposition
of street lamp
     and headlight
with nothing except
those familiar constellations
and a degree of
     lunular exposure
to guide our path
despite the cold and
that lingering feeling
of obstinate lethargy
we firmly planted
our mud-caked boots
upon the saturated ground
unstable and clogged
as it may have been
in order to marvel
at that moment
of unexpected perfection
perhaps it was simply
a case of fortuitousness
or sheer coincidence
but to us it seems
the universe is offering
more wishes than we could
ever have hoped for

comet Swift-Tuttle
Perseid meteor show
shooting star wishes






Mark Toney ©️ 2023

equal top billing
Leonids and Taurids show
~fireball duet




Mark Toney © 2020

under the night sky with great people,
looking up, looking for hope
then there's me, thinking of how were

i forgot the wishes i made for those
six meteors i witnessed
but in the seventh meteor,
i wished for you

we ended up in a bad away,
i am well aware of that but
i really wished for you

for your happiness, with someone new

To you who whip through your pain,

Remember that your mind is abounding,
It is  mesmerizing
that when you start to talk about your ideas,
it's like your wondrous mind is pulling me
inside this enormous galaxy,
not a mere galaxy that is empty
instead it is full of heavenly bodies
and colors and life.
I fly in comfort,
I feel weightless.
When you talk about your dreams,
I can picture you collecting the stardust
and making a life out of it
Your eyes speaks like an abstract
of meteor showers
and comets
and auroras,
painted in one great canvas.
The more I explore into it,
the more I could understand
the rhythm of your thoughts.
If you're thinking
that your life had fallen apart;
Remember me,
me who you shared your light and hope with,
You came to me like a shooting star, 
So rare yet so beautiful.

The incomplete dark
of a suburban night
makes seeing the great beyond
hard

but patience, peace
and allowing the eyes to adjust
finally reveals a truth

firefly flicks burn
amongst the static majesty
of constellations
reassuring that all is
still in motion

from our frozen homes
we can gaze and hope
as surely as our kin
watched stars fall like rain

In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

for George King

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky,
and the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our bodies to some violent ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze:
blown high, upward-yearning, twin spirits returning
to the world of resplendence from which we were seized.

Published in Songs of Innocence (Issue 3, Spring 2000), Romantics Quarterly (Vol. II, Issue IV, Winter 2003)

Keywords/Tags: romantic, romanticism, whispering, night, stars, hills, flame, meteors, sky, lilies, shame, souls, stolen, ocean, sea, butterfly, breeze, twin, spirits, returning, heaven, resplendence