Postcard from the Island in the Middle of an August Night

Still hour. None make the crossing now.
Only the lighthouse’s brash assurance,
the sickening confidence of whoever launched
that string of following satellites.
I put down my words, watch the perseids
falling, as they ever have.

-Tara K. Shepersky, 2023

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Chickadee party out here this morning, the way there was a coyote party when I went to bed last night: wild and ricochet’d in all directions, fast-woven with a hundred subtleties of pattern. Like moonbeams in water, is the image that occurs—except urgent, which is a way I don’t imagine moonbeams.

Sea clouds this morning, but clear stars late last night after moonset. Woken by un-neighborly (I am tempted to say ‘un-godly’) human noise—but then sitting up in bed, I saw a shooting star.

I re-arranged my body so I could watch the sky, and before my eyes fell too, I saw two more. I couldn’t recall the whole poem, but I wanted only the last two lines:

I couldn’t remember a word in there, also. What was it I was trying to put down?

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