The Meteor
A Vision
—09.10.25
It cut across the skies,
Grim sign to terrorize
A world whose conscience dies.
Like blinding lightning hurled
From thunderclouds wind-whirled,
It stuns the silenced world,
Rends peoples, realms in twain,
Shakes continents amain,
Drives multitudes insane.
In its horrendous wake,
A rift tears from the quake
Of rage no love can slake.
Its depths show forth, revealed,
What silence long concealed,
Now evermore unsealed:
Infernal magma-fire,
Where countless demons’ ire
Churns in chaotic gyre,
A white-hot, roiling hell,
Whence hatred dared expel
The doom-star to foretell
How they erupt, arise,
Engulfing all that lies
Beneath the restless skies,
Unstoppably expand,
Inundating the land
Where nothing can withstand
The flames that pierce the sky.
The people flee and cry;
The nations fall and die.
How long must earth so rage?
What prayers can now assuage
So crushing a rampage?
Oh! Let this be a dream
Fear-born, whose terrors seem
So real I wake to scream.
But no—I do not wake.
My sight is no mistake.
Earth heaves, the heavens quake,
The realms beneath their sphere,
Both hated and held dear,
Dissolve and disappear—
To rematerialize,
To surge, reborn, and rise
To reach the scorning skies.
Adam Sedia (b. 1984) lives in his native Northwest Indiana and practices law as a civil and appellate litigator. He has published four books of poetry and his poems, essays, and fiction have appeared in various literary journals. He is also a composer, and his musical works may be heard on his YouTube channel.
Adam:
I shiver reading this. Evan’s great picture sets the tone marvelously, and your syntax, meter, and rhyme carry the story perfectly. It packs a wallop! Wow!
Thank you! It is wonderful to know that I could inspire a shiver.
Adam, the Bible tells us the world will be destroyed by fire. A meteor strike is one of the ways I have envisioned the end of the world. Your word and rhyme selection is superb in your scary depiction.
St. Peter speaks of this in one of his two epistles: the world was destroyed once by water, and will be destroyed this time by fire. There are other prophecies that supplement this vision. Look up any of the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin at La Sallette or Akita, right up to the present. I fear we are perilously close to that moment.
St. Peter speaks of this destruction in one of his epistles: God destroyed the world once by water, and will destroy it again by fire. Many other prophecies supplement this vision. Look at any of the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin at La Sallette or Akita, right up to the present day. I fear we are perilously close to that moment.
A very curt epigraph (just a date – 09.10.25) suggests that this poem was prompted by an actual vision the poet had on September 10 of this year, or perhaps the 9th of October.
If that is true (a massive meteor strike followed by a tearing apart of continents and the eruption of magma from deep in the earth) then the vision is an important psychological message from the unconscious. Of course, it might be true that the poem is pure fictive mimesis, and that this poet is very good at scaring the hell out of us.
Using trimeter tercets rhyming AAA was an excellent choice for this piece. The shortness, the intensity, the terror, the sense of inescapable destruction — they are all made especially vivid by this structure.
Totally agree with Joe on this tercet structure – and difficult rhyming pattern – very effective indeed. Well done.
As you observe further down, it is inspired by true events, though much of it is fictive mimesis. I was quite satisfied with the effect of AAA tercets in trimeter (maybe there is numerological significance there). I think I’ve hit upon a favorite metrical form.
A thrilling but grim narrative, to be sure, with terse lines beating out, remorselessly, a general destruction. It seizes our attention. The third line, “A world whose conscience dies.” suggests that what follows is as much a moral catastrophe as a physical one. In this it has Biblical overtones. The poet insists, “My sight is no mistake.” And he does not advance any hope that I can see. Rather we get a powerful example of what can be done with powerful, evocative language–three beats to a line, hammering out a frightening vision. Very well made and impressive.
Thank you! You read correctly: the cataclysm is moral as much as physical.
Reading the epigraph as September 10, 2025, that was the date of Charlie Kirk’s assassination
Yes, I should have noticed that. This makes the context of the poem more public, rather than a private vision.
A Biblical prophecy, a metaphor for the present earthly turmoil, an imagined repeat of the astronomical event that put paid to the dinosaurs. You’re poem leaves us with a lot to think about, Adam.
Yes, that was the massive Chicxulub asteroid impact of 66 million years ago. It is fairly certain now that this event wiped out the dinosaurs, and set the stage for mammalian evolution and dominance.
Adam, this is so profoundly marvelous, that I hardly know what to say about it. I agree with Joseph that the rhyming trimeter tercets make a reader feel the intense, perhaps apocalyptic goings-on. The poem is emphatic, yet mysterious. Its visual imagery is powerful (as in “Infernal magma fire”; “Engulfing all that lies / Beneath the restless skies”; “The nations fall and die.”) But it also connects what can be seen to abstract, philosophical ideas (“A world whose conscience dies”; “Of rage no love can slake”; “The realms beneath their sphere, / Both hated and held dear”. Well — Wow!
Thank you! I am always flattered to hear your compliments.
Dating this vision in the recent past, when the apocalyptic events described were not observed (at least not in the natural sphere) by others, puts the perceptions of your readers in question, Adam. This is a good tactic to make them question the visionary about the truth of his vision. You, and the seer, begin with a meteor, which causes fear, then social division involving rage that literally (as far as the seer sees) raises hell. There is the hatred which is said to be the primary social emotion in hell, and there are flames. Here the seer breaks in with “How long?”, often heard in Biblical psalms where the afflicted describe their seemingly endless afflictions. The seer thinks his vision may be a dream, but discovers it is not.
A classical (either Hebrew or pagan) setting for this could be a temple where persons sleep for the night in hopes of a divine revelation. In Biblical psalms, they usually (but not always) receive reassuring confidence. But this setting is not available on September 10, 2025. On the day Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, many persons who admired Kirk felt fear, intensified divisiveness, and rage in the moral sphere. As a little time passed, those hostile to Kirk and his supporters began to feel the same. There was also a sense of disbelief. I recall not believing the news when I first heard it, and waking on each day thereafter thinking it could not be true. I would turn on the radio and hear Charlie again.
Your dramatic plan of dipping into the apocalypse suits the moral feelings of many–despite the clear consolations of an honored funeral and resumption of Kirk’s work by his organization. Those things, of course, bring out the rage of opponents all the more.
And your wisdom as a poet, Adam, made an excellent choice of a fear-instilling meteor to begin this vision that ends in “scorning skies” rather than “morning skies.” The omen can put supernatural fear into those who are supernaturally oriented–but also reminds naturalistic thinkers of their version of apocalypse.
This poem must stand among the most creative and most psychologically realistic responses to the unexpected deadly shot fired on September 10, 2025.
Good catch on the date. This poem was directly inspired by the Kirk assassination, but spoke to something much larger, so I didn’t want to place too much emphasis on the event itself. I remember an author (maybe Emerson) calling John Brown the “meteor” foretelling the Civil War and thought of the bullet that slew Charlie as similarly meteor-like, and took it from there. Thank you for compliments. I truly appreciate them.
Adam, I read despair between the lines of this uncharacteristically terse poem. That plus the important tragic date which serves as the epigraph. That plus the ”scorning” skies — a word-choice which startled and then depressed me. Yes, this poem is suggestive of a supernatural vision. This is Cassandra warning Troy of its impending doom. This is Jeremiah warning Jerusalem to prepare for disaster. A dark vision. But, despite your tight control of rhyme and meter, this sounds to me like a howl of pain.
You read the poem accurately, picking up exactly the effect I intended. Thank you for sharing the effect it had on you. It is extremely satisfying to know that my work can impact a reader — especially a fellow poet — in such a way.
That’s a masterful depiction of the nature event and the speed with which it occurs, with the whole poem looking like a meteor shower and the punishment of Sodom & Gomorrah, punctuated by its series of rhymes.