A Deep River Year 
August 13, 2014   

The days are still full of summer, but the nights are telling us that things are changing.   The dusk settles upon us earlier now, and with it the loud songs of the cicadas and crickets and katydids, almost a din resounding from their hiding places in the woods around us.     To the insects themselves, this may be a love song.  But the lyrics I hear are these:  "Summer is ending  Summer is ending."   

This week has also been a time of celestial omens.   A bright perigee full moon, popularly known as a "Super Moon" because of its size,  has spilled its silver light over the August landscape just as the greatest meteor shower of the year--the Perseids--has arrived.     This happens each year in mid-August, as our small planet sweeps through the remnant of a comet's tail.     Some of that tail--particles of ice, rock, and space dust--burn up as they pass through earth's atmosphere.  We see them as "shooting stars" in the night.  Some scientists speculate that as we watch the streaks of fire across the sky, we might actually be seeing a replay of how water arrived on earth during the millenia of this strange blue planet's formation. 

Cosmic origins aside, these annual meteor showers signal that the arc of another year has turned toward autumn.  Monday we went out in the back yard and tipped back in our Adirondack chairs to watch the show  and to cherish for another moment the sweetness of a summer night.    With that moon shining, there weren't many meteors to see.  But one glorious streak of light did autograph our night,  reminding me of another summer.   My  sons were little boys then, and one August night on vacation we drove through a countryside devoid of street lights or shopping centers.  Along a quiet dirt road we pulled over and clambered onto a grassy embankment with a couple of blankets and stretched out on our backs to watch what most of the world was missing.   We said nothing to each other except for an occasional gasp or shout or giggle as the miracle unfolded.    Stars were in our eyes.

Shooting Stars

Nothing is fixed.
Everything changes.
The ancient stars
stretched across the heavens
have kept an order through the eons.
I was born to see what ancients saw:
a wondrous permanence,
the Great Dipper pointing to Polaris--
a guide to ships and sleepless wayfarers.
We have sought the stars for this,
like old Orion, hunting endlessly
for something that would stay.
And then on this moonlit August night,
even the steadfast stars seem to burn and fly,
like summer, like time,
like all we hold precious.
They flash before us for a moment,
leaving a gleaming trail across the darkness,
then are gone.
But there remains a memory to haunt us,
a signature of lingering light--
or perhaps a bright dream
of lying on a meadow's edge not so long ago
as crickets chirped a love song
and little children, watching stars rain fire,
made a silver wish.

--Timothy Haut, August 13. 2014