To celebrate the Class of 2021, the English department at Batavia High School got together for a special reading of the poem “Meteor Shower,” from the collection Counting Descent by Clint Smith.

“Meteor Shower” by Clint Smith

I read somewhere that meteor showers
are almost always named after

the constellations from which
they originate. It’s funny, I think,

how even the universe is telling us
that we can never get too far

from the place that created us.
How there is always a streak of our past

trailing closely behind us
like a smattering of obstinate memories.

Even when we enter a new atmosphere,
become subsumed in flames, turn to dust,

lose ourselves in the wind, and scatter
the surface of all that rests beneath us,

we bring a part of where we are from
to every place we go.