At the Falling of the Stars

I dreamed the stars were falling.

I’ve been exhausted for days. Jimmy’s boy and the Artful Dodgers kept coming over to help me put the garden to bed, a few hours every afternoon. It takes twice as long to do any gardening, if you have to stop every minute to find something harmless for chaotic Appalachian children to do to feel helpful. But somehow, in the midst of all of it, I pushed aside the dead sunflower stalks at the top of the compost heap, and dug out the black chocolatey soil hidden at the bottom.

Barrow after barrow onto the weed-infested patch, spread out with a shovel, then back to the heap to do it again.  Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.

Humming and singing to myself, as I always do when I’m doing repetitive work. “My Lord, what a morning, my Lord, what a morning! My Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall.” 

I could never be a real farmer like my ancestors in Greenbrier County. I probably couldn’t even manage a paradise on a triple lot like my dear grandfather. But my little domain here in Steubenville, that was just enough. I covered the whole patch with compost. I spread out all the cardboard I had, weighing it down with bricks. It wasn’t quite enough. A third of the vegetable patch was still bare earth. I had nothing left to cover the grass around that rose bush, where I’m planning to grow wildflowers for the pollinators next spring. And I was out of breath, aching, and bone tired.

I was so tired that it took hours to get to sleep. This happens when I’m at my most exhausted: my body drowses, but doesn’t settle. It was nearly morning when I finally drifted the rest of the way off.

I dreamed that I was watching the stars fall from the sky.

I was all the way out in down state West Virginia, near the place where the family farm used to be, in the farmhouse– not the real one, which I’ve never seen even in a photograph, but the one I imagined from my grandfather’s stories. It was night, but barely: I could still see green and purple where the sun had once been, just above the tops of the pine trees. There were children playing in the grass: one was Adrienne, a little younger than Adrienne is now. The others I’d never seen before, but in the dream, I accepted them as family. I laid down on my back in the front yard to look at the stars, while the children played all around.

The stars are bright out in the middle of West Virginia, with no light pollution to spoil your view, but in my dream the stars were impossibly bright. I couldn’t just see the Milky Way. I could see galaxies and nebulae that foamed like spray on the ocean, planets and satellites orbiting dangerously close to earth, constellations no human had seen before. And then the stars moved.  Slim needles of starlight dove from one end of the sky to the other, and were gone. At first I could only see the movement at the corners of my eyes, but then the whole sky was full of shooting stars.

“It’s a meteor shower,” said somebody standing next to me, but it wasn’t. It was the end of the world.

It was the end of the world, but it was so beautiful I forgot to be afraid.

I woke up, and it was a warm, sunny Wednesday morning, in late November. The last of the golden maple leaves still clung to those doomed trees my landlord keeps putting off cutting. The air smelled of honey and brown sugar.

I went about my business, writing, tending the guinea pig, waiting for Adrienne to get off school so I’d have an excuse to go out. A neighbor said she’d bring over some cardboard boxes to leave on my porch, so I could finish the gardening before the snow and freezing rain got here Thursday afternoon.  By the time I was ready to go to the middle school, the sun was gone. It was drizzling, and getting colder.

By the time we finished our errands and got home, it was miserably wet.

I kept writing until I noticed the sky had grown darker, and the branches of those maples were waving in a harsh wind.

That was when I remembered those cardboard boxes on the porch.

I ran outside, shivering. It had gone down at least ten degrees in the past hour. Rain was blowing sideways against the house.

The boxes were still there: long rectangles like the kind a table that you assemble yourself comes in. They tugged at my arms like sails as the wind caught them. In another moment I was off the porch and around the back, tearing the boxes down to flat strips.

Again, like my dream, it was the end of the world. The stars were needles of rain flying at my face. The nebulae were real clouds in a patchwork up above: steel, iron, charcoal, ash, gray-brown, gray-blue, gray-purple. The firmament was cracking open and the flood waters were here.

Salvation, Glory, and Power to our God, Alleluia! His judgements are honest and true, Alleluia, Alleluia! 

Sing praise to our God, all you his servants, Alleluia, all who worship him reverently, great and small, Alleluia, Alleluia! The Lord our all-powerful God is King; alleluia! Let us rejoice, sing praise, and give him glory. Alleluia, Alleluia! 

The wedding feast of the lamb has begun, Alleluia! And his bride is prepared to welcome him! Alleluia, alleluia! 

My Lord, what a morning. My Lord, what a morning! My Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall! 

The rain splashed in my face as I somehow got the cardboard torn into flat sheets and laid it down. Over the place where the tomatoes and squash had been. Over the place where the pumpkins had been. Over the failed watermelon vine that Jimmy’s boy and I tended with no results. Over the sunflower patch. All gone now, returned to the earth.

I weighed down the cardboard with anything I could find: bricks, boards, sand toys the children had left out.

When I got inside I was freezing and soaked to the skin.

I ran upstairs to shower and put on warm clothes. When I got back down, it wasn’t late Autumn anymore, it was winter.

Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him— even those who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. So shall it be! Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and was and is to come.

In Spring, I learned that resurrection is only natural.

Now that winter is blowing in, I learn that so is the end of the world.

O Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall!