Stanley Pelter

Eureka

eureka birth day
complex star reformation
follows new space trails

There is sea. There am I. There is she, body curiously haphazard, squeezed below a ridge of mixed shingle, sand, pieces of ragged rock, Jamaican black night. Sluggish, less-than-solid moon above a boat-deserted sea is our beacon. Laden estuary is crowded with sounds of amateur desires.

She looks up. Again waits. Her darkness is a backdrop for a sky-high theatrical performances. First Night Of Perseids: earth's orbit crossing comet Swift-Tuttle's pert tail, striding Olympian Perseus constellation. Fragments of meteor burn into a shooting star trail. She is here. Alone.

Every year she closes in on that endless distance between long-term insignificance, ephemeral immateriality formed by short flares, wonder of a fanfare birthday.

snow vanishes
red shots of understood science
become shrill star speed

"you'se born in ablazin' blackness of nightlight trails when them shooting stars was active, makin' one after anuver after anuver. lookin' up, watchin', bewitched. ran inside 'cause you'se was there, reddy white, fully borned, lookin' up as I carries you'se out to see up that fortune sky" her daddy had once told her.

No matter how many years she has been looking into every similar night, looking up startles bewitches just like it did her daddy all those years ago. This time, shuddering, she cuddles a side of herself, senses a beginning of closure that can only end in a squeezed body. Knows this evanescent blaze is a precursor to that darkest darkness she has to bury inside her.

Perseus holds
Medusa's severed head
zoom of snake flares