comet Swift-Tuttle
Perseid meteor show
shooting star wishes






Mark Toney ©️ 2023

Outside with tea and blankets:
a Fortress against the

August cold.

And so begins another typically English evening.

night is marching,
marching on and

unusually

we are not glued to our phones
nor the daily grind.

we catch a handful of

Shooting Stars

and find that this is an addictive occupation.

One moment I wished I could drape my room with starry waterfalls
but then considered how they would

dull
      
       and
            
            darken

if I breathed too deeply in my sleep.

(a subconscious effort to absorb some starlight into my clotting veins.)

So leave me now under the
Flaming Sky and all its anger.

Leave me alone so that I may fall asleep,
at last.

I have an appointment with the moon about my dulling temperament.

The stars have sworn to let down a

r
o
p
e

l
a
d
d
e
r

my own Stairway to Heaven.

So rip my heart out,
let my arteries unwind.

Haul me to heaven with my umbilical cord.

There I cling to the back of a comet
and hurtle through space
alive at last and full of stars
until the nausea takes hold

and puts me to bed.