10,082. TO WHAT TO DO NOW

TO DO WHAT TO DO NOW

Turn your attention, please, to the altar

at the right  -  de-consecrated, all this,

years back when that stuff mattered.

Now it's more a shelf than anything else.

I do keep candles on it, for old time's

sake, though I've never lit a one. 'You

can't go to Rome again,' or whatever 

it was Thomas Wolfe said. 

-

One night there was a meteor storm, 

and I watched it from here. Funny, all

that  -  not like an eclipse at all; which

you can almost set your watch by, starts

at 3:13, dark by 3:24, and full-light again

for 3:51. In mid-afternoon, no less. This

was a meteor storm, in the dead of night,

of course, with its own peculiar time.

-

It seemed to go on forever, but not as

a constant. There would be 60 or 70

crazy, flying specks (one always expected

a celestial noise, but there never was any),

and then nothing for a while, and then, a

few here, and a few there until, soon, yes,

another big blast, like sparklers or fireworks.

Smashing through the sky, to us, but really

in some empty ether, I guess, up there. Or

out there; it's probably got nothing to do

with up. Which is something of what

Thomas Wolfe actually did say, and which

gives this whole starlight thing away :

'You can't go home again.'