Monday Poem: "The Night of the Perseids" -- by Harold Dull

               The Water Pitcher is lifted into the sky --
               Cloud upon cloud blowing in from the sea.
               The birds from the north fly south.
               The birds of the upper air,
               We came to love,
               Wheel northward.

The night of the Perseids
we took a blanket
into the garden
and laid back
the better
to see
that meteor shower's
short swift paths
that last hardly long enough
to point them out to each other,
a word or a sigh,
and they are gone.
And they are said
to be matter
thrown out from the sun,
or bits of rock,
shrapnel, scraps,
the trail
of a long exploded planet
we pass through each year.
Or they are snakes
on the head
Perseus.

* * * * *

Harold Dull is the creator of Watsu and Tantsu, two forms of bodywork in water. He has published four books about these forms of therapies and has also published a collection of poetry called Finding Ways to Water: Collected Poems 1955-2007, which includes the above poem.

Dull began writing poetry in 1955 as a student of Stanley Kunitz and Theodore Roethke at the University of Washington. He then published several small books of poetry as part of the San Franscisco Renaissance. "The Night of the Perseids" was first published in Poetry Magazine in May 1966.