Sequence of Three Poems

Watching the Perseids; Remembering the Dead

The Perseids go riding softly down:
Hair-streak moths, brushing with faint wings
This audience of stars with sharp, young faces,
Staring our eyes out with such charming brilliance:
Life, set in its ways and constellations,
Which knows its magnitude, its name and status.

These, though, are whispered ones, looked for in
    August
Or when we trip on dead and dying birthdays,
Drinking a quiet toast at some green Christmas
To those, who, fallen from our space and height
No longer reach us with their smoky fingers
Or touch this sheet of water under no moon.

They are the comet's tail we all must pass through
Dreamed out into a trail of Jack O'Lanterns,
...