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Perseid Shower


I could be worse employed
Than as a watcher of the void
Whose part should be to tell
What star if any fell
 
I saw four shooting stars tonight. Lying on the grass in my back garden I was wondering why I know so few constellations and so little about the universe.
     The thought used to be truly comforting. That however huge and important we think our lives are, there are things a hundred times older than we will ever be, and which will keep burning a hundred times longer. And we can see them only as one fleeting after-image of a life that may be already extinguished.
     I've sat under the stars with a friend and talked the world to rights. I've watched a starry sky turn into a sunrise over the sea, and heard a thousand strangers cheer the setting sun and the emerging moon.
     A kind of paganism seems built in. It's the part of us that swears at the rain even though all we're really talking to are bags of water hanging in the air. It's the bit that turns the head towards the polkadot blanket of the night sky in bafflement and fascination, trying to find a set of twins or a scorpion or a lion in the black.
     Four shooting stars, four shards of rock hitting the earth's atmosphere and leaving a trail of burning dust behind them.
          Of course, I wished on every one of them.

To make sure what star I missed
I should have to check on my list
Every star in sight
It might take me all night.

-Robert Frost, On Making Certain Anything has Happened

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