A Shower of Stars – The Leonid Meteor Shower, 1833

Like snowflakes in a winter storm they fell,
fell out of the crisp, clear November sky
numbers uncountable, a shower of stars
falling in the serene, chill evening,
illuminating the heavens like
ten thousand rockets streaking, exploding,
burning out in the night.

Hour upon hour they fell,
beyond counting, beyond belief,
surely a sign, a message, a warning
from above – the end, the return,
a sublime, awesome reckoning.

Yet, at dawn, in growing light,
in the cold rising of the sun,
it was gone, gone from sight
its remaining sense of Judgement Day,
of end time prophecy, left only in names of
saloons, stables, and cheap billiard parlors.

J. B. Hogan has been published in a number of journals including the Blue Lake Review, Crack the Spine, Copperfield Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Well Read Magazine, and Aphelion. His eleven books include Bar Harbor, Mexican Skies, Living Behind Time, Losing Cotton, and The Apostate. He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Find more by J. B. Hogan in the Author Index.