Wanderer (To A Meteorite Found) Poem by Jean Bernard Parr

A lump, I hold
a metal heart
nest you, in both hands
and wonder
where you have been
bearing these scars
from careless tumbling
between stars
up close you can see
you are not made
for stillness or rest
did you consort
sometime with darting Mercury,
that enticer of the fickle tryst,
to shipwreck here in white heat
streaked with iron tears?
how long, how long
have you roamed
this boundless vault?
had you not flitted so close,
dark moth, to this blue
candle flame
your fiery arrival may have been
merely a half way beacon
for an odyssey between
the spheres lasting another
hundred thousand years

there is in me the urge
to set you free, a nursed
and mended bird, but that is
not to be, I cannot teach you flight
and so we are both prisoners
of a heavy country, feet and
eyelids pulled down
by relentless gravity