Meteoric Rise

On the radio they are talking about

someone’s ‘Meteoric Rise’ and without

attending to who or why this someone’s

fate has been so described, we are into

a conversation about the descriptive phrase.

 

“Why do we say ‘Meteoric Rise’ when meteors

do not in fact rise at all but rather fall,” you ask, annoyed.

“They fall into our atmosphere and burn into nothingness.” 

I suggest that a “Shooting Star” as they are sometimes called,

appears to rise in a sort of arc as it crosses the sky. 

We had watched a few years ago the Leonid Meteor Showers

in a darkened parking lot atop a nearby peak with our children and

their friends in tow, lying in the snow in sleeping bags in the dark

waiting to see hundreds of meteors falling towards the earth. 

One in particular stays burned in my memory: a brilliant meteor

in the southern sky left a spectacular tail that seemed to burn on

as if it was caught in some ultra high wind current

and metamorphosed into the shape of an elaborate dragon. 

It glowed on longer than any other meteor that night even as it fell. 

“Yes, they are fast and they flare up in a sort of glory,

but they do not rise,” you assert. “They fall.”

I concede that they do not rise, but indeed fall and burn up. 

But now I am thinking about the juxtaposition

of the words ‘Meteoric’ and ‘Mediocre.’

~ Andrine de la Rocha

posted 12/15/2010