I Once Knew a Sparkledrop

It probably would

    never happen

    for someone else

    as it happened

    for me, just then.

The car I was in

    was speeding

    at about seventy.

The night had

    already begun.

    The view from

    the windows

    revealed mostly

    open fields.

Small cold-like clouds

    slept stubbornly

    only yards

    above the earth.

The black from the

    night part of night

    was not black yet,

    but a mellowing

    deep, far off blue.

And then I, and I believe,

    I alone, saw

    this small child

    run a few steps

    in a field, and

    stop to throw a

    lighted sparkler

    into the blackening

    blueness of the sky.

It glowered happily,

    and yet desperately;

    and yet desperately,

    for it would

    never return

    to the earth

    as the same

    bright stick of

    joyousness

    as it is now.

The last gleeful

    sparkledrops

    painted the child's

    attentive face

    with a friendly, but

    departing,

    orange goodbye.

The image of the streak

    from the child's

    run and throw

    now was taken in

    by the nearest mother cloud.

I remember it now-

    still as if those seconds

    are still occurring

    as a full length movie.

The child smiling up,

    along with the sparkler;

    the fading contrail

    evolving from white

    to a soft blue and

    slowly melting into

    the air.

And then I could

    see no more.

A one act performance.

So fast.

    So very, very long.