dVerse Poets Pub: Haibun Monday – Night Sky

Today I am the pubtender over at dVerse Poet’s Pub and it is Haibun Monday!  Today we will be writing about the night sky – watching the stars, meteor showers, making love under the night sky, the creatures of the night under the sky, dreams of the night sky, how it affects us – in other words, the night sky!  We’ve written about the day sky, the moon, and now we are writing about the night sky.  I hope you all will enjoy and will take the time to travel over to dVerse Poets Pub for some most excellent reading.  A haibun is a non-fiction prosimetric form based on the original works of Basho and his travelogue, Road to the Northwest.  It is usually a short paragraph or two ended with a real haiku (not just a 5-7-5 or Americanized sentences).  They can be varied and so very interesting.  The Pub opens today at 3:00 pm EST. https://dversepoets.com/2016/09/05/twinkle-twinkle/

Bathing in a Meteor Shower
It was almost 35 years to the day since I had been in the Mojave Desert gazing up at the night sky watching the Perseid meteor showers. Now here I was lying in my lawn chair looking up at the night sky, gazing and waiting for the showers to come. They were supposed to be at their peak tonight between 1:00 and 4:00 a.m. I had been sitting in the lawn chair for about an hour and my eyes were fully adjusted to the night. Around me the hot summer night hummed and thrummed with the sound of insects and the peeping of tree frogs and the bwaaaaaamp of the the larger frogs. I noticed a delicate clucking sound coming from the large oak tree at the base of our property – the family of owls were awake and ready to start on their nightly hunts for food. A high pitched squeaking let me know the bats were out and about with their nightly insect eating activities. How different from the extreme silence of the Mojave!

I patiently lay there looking up. Distant gray clouds ghosted against the black sky reminding me that the clouds were always out, anytime of day. The sky was clear, black, and full of stars. I saw the first meteor streak towards the line of the horizon. A few moments, another flash. And then – one after the other, meteors were flashing and falling several at once every few seconds. I was excited and sat up straighter so I could better watch the display. After a couple of hours, the display died down. I was amazed that a meteor the size of a grain of sand could create such a display. I was always amazed at how the debris from the Swift-Tuttle Comet could cause such zinging about of light and how this year, 35 years later, it was again a peak showing of the Perseids. In the 35 years since I had last viewed this display, I had loved and lost an incredible Samurai lover, changed my vocation, and gotten married to a man as amazing as the spectacular meteor showers I was once again watching. I smiled in the darkness. Life was good. Life was amazing.

from the vast ocean
of the summer sky – bits of
sand lit the night sky.

free public domain NASA photo Perseid meteor showers