Season of Shooting Stars

We lay upon acorn-strewn lawn

still vibrating with the day’s early scatter

of gravel under reckless pick-up truck,

dumb-happy golden retriever in the back,

all nose and tongue and tail.

On the other side of that long orchard driveway,

we slept between lichen-covered farmhouse

and ancient privet hedge that topped out

at the same height as my grandfather’s buzz cut.

Our bodies splayed upon grass that had been day-green,

but was now a hue mixed by rural night:

something darker, moister, not wholly unrelated,

but something altogether different.

Not so much sibling, as first cousin.

Like we were: evenings without curfew or bedtime.

In the midnight air, crazy cousin confessions,

so yeasty we kneaded them into rising goose bumps,

so tantalizing, we shivered from spine and skull;

we owned that and every moment.

She was daughter of an unstable farmer,

beauty queen looks, commensurate depth.

Me: daughter of one who escaped,

pudgy, plain, curious about the world.

Like strawberries in June,

or corn on the cob and fireworks,

I thought there was a season for shooting stars.

We’d spend those warm August nights

in hand-me-down flannel cocoons,

watching for what came every year,

like clockwork, like fruit-bearing trees.

Flat on the ground, the privet our new horizon

the oak loomed with its back board attached too high

unless one of the uncles lifted us straight up

for the slam dunk, ball back to earth with loamy thud.

Deep sky yielded flaming lights

over the Lower Place,

over Grandpa Ralph’s across the way,

over our heads.

Way over our heads.

There was a time I was convinced

I stood a chance of plucking –

all on my very own --

at least one luminous streak

from its cosmic fabric.

Could capture it in my favorite pail:

sun-paled mint green plastic,

discarded Tupperware,

the rim melted on just one side.

Proof that someone, somewhere, somehow,

had acquired the magic meteor,

had burned the bucket before,

probably hand singed in the bargain,

and set her imagination on fire.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston