It's in the middle of the night I realize
I will go without knowing
how red streaks are made in the sky
at sunset
or how the meteors know to rain
twice a year
across the blackness.
I will leave with only the love of watching them,
but with no answers,
and I will be a wisp of memory
to those who follow,
as ones are to me
who came before brown pages
of photo albums
and lived moments all their own.
Remembered in liked to's and loved when's
at best
like my great grandmother is to me.
A woman who crocheted,
who served candied fruit peel in a tin,
who had ten children, some who died,
who wore glasses with black frames.
No childhood,
no adulthood but as I knew her when I was six,
no trips or moments of her own.
I will be remembered then,
or not,
like her mother,
or hers,
who lived sometime
somewhere
and stared at the sky unknowing,
while red blazes hung in the clouds
at sunset,
and the Perseids shot across the sky at night.
