I wanted it to be mine.
They said it was just a piece
of broken rock.
I said a meteorite.
My dad threw it up
and let it fall, a dead weight,
but I knew it merely slept.
At night I felt the echo of its radiance
from the shelf. Inside, I knew,
an ember lived and glowed
like a prehistoric egg.
To me it had been born of the sky,
was bred out of star dust.
To me it had held court to the moon,
had worn a dress of luxuriant light,
had danced each night in the ballroom above.
Held up, examined
in naked daylight it looked as dry as granite,
but I knew it was biding time on our planet -
that it could last millennia
until the time of bursting suns.
I tried to feed it stories – reports from earth.
I set it on a shelf to breath our climate.
But it sat silent, a prophet to nothing,
and when I nursed it back to a polish
it sat dumb in my hand,
bursting to shine like a lamp,
or looked ready to explode,
just like the spark
that hatched the dawn of time.
David Mohan