Fireball

Abstract

Fireball Laura Reece Hogan (bio) Name the physics of such a trajectory, of stone leaving the sling, of meteorite grazing the atmosphere after midnight, green flashing ball with twist of tail skimming the Pilbara sky. A stone from the river, or from interstellar space, a chosen rock taken up and flung with a finesse beyond. The astounded Australian night owls gape at the green sparking spectacle. The rock strikes the millimeter of the giant's forehead, dead accurate. We will never find them, these fireballs, once all that superheated air vaporizes and only the pebble is left. We will never find the iron rock among iron rocks in the Pilbara outback, in the Vale of the Terebinth. And yet the story. The pyrotechnic glow of your perfect path. How the slightest may be the shooting star. How you propel us with aim and timing. We squint to observe the miracle: the flick of your wrist, the shining stone. [End Page 325] Laura Reece Hogan Laura Reece Hogan is the author of Litany of Flights (2020), which won the 2020 Paraclete Poetry Prize, the chapbook O Garden-Dweller (2017), and the nonfiction spiritual theology book I Live, No Longer I (2017). A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she is one of ten poets featured in the anthology In a Strange Land (2019). Her poems have appeared in America, Dappled Things, The Christian Century, First Things, Anglican Theological Review, Cumberland River Review, Whale Road Review, The Cresset, Santa Fe Literary Review and other publications. www.laurareecehogan.com. Copyright © 2021 Johns Hopkins University Press