Leo, by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe

Leo

by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe

Oh, Lion of Nemea,
killed by Hercules,
but reviving as a constellation,
and a radiant for
the most spectacular meteor outbursts!

Was your main star Regulus
a part of the Star of Kings,
in association with Jupiter and Venus,
as some astronomers said?

I don't know ... Nobody knows ...
But I thank you, Leo,
for you hosted that conjunction
occuring close to Regulus
in the year 2 B.C.,
and giving to humanity
one of the greatest shows of light,
after the giant fireballs,
after the Moon,
after the Sun...

Andrei Dorian Gheorghe is the founder and director of the Cosmopoetry Festival of the Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy-SARM. He is the editor of over 30 slim English anthologies of Romanian and international astropoetry, and is the author of original astropoetry performances presented at the International Meteor Organization Conferences 1997-2002, the Leonid MAC Workshop of NASA (Tel Aviv, 2000), and the European Convention of Science Fiction - Romania 2001. In 2003, he initiated the Meteor Contemporary Poetry Project for the IMO.