Night. How the stars came down
arching over us, and the only name
we had for them was shooting stars.
Why there were so many was anybody's guess.
My great grandmother thought the world
was coming to an end when Haley's comet
flared across the sky. I lay flat on my back
and watched the night sky falling
all around me and I wanted,
more than anything, never to go home.
I did, of course. They put us campers into busses
and drove us back to tenements,
asphalt and streetlights in the city.
What I didn't know that night
in my bedroll at Sherwood Forest Camp
was that when I got home,
home wasn't my real home any more.
I had a new home in my remembering
and it was dark and safe and beautiful
with shooting stars still falling all around.

"How the Stars Came Down" by Pat Schneider