Meteor

The meteor never knew
how hope grew from the light
it gave to the watchers below,
or how they hung their wishes
upon it. 

It did not know
how alive it made those people feel,
how for a few seconds
they put aside their envy
of those around them
who seemed to have had all the luck
and told themselves they now had
a little of it themselves
because of what they’d seen.

Someone will no doubt say
this is an argument
against suicide, how you never know
who will be lit by your passage;

someone will be wrong,
someone will have missed the point
that awareness or lack thereof
would have changed nothing
for the meteor, which fell
into vapor according to the rules
which also gave the people below it
the light from the burning
and the hope is always
a secondary and unintended
effect.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations