Knox Eclipse
By noon, we found our way
to a city park, not to escape
the crowds. There was no avoiding
the masses of those who would witness
this matinee of the cosmos,
and I calculated that my former
family would not try
to brave the traffic
to move their caravan somewhere else—
but mostly we both thought it felt more right
to stand among green things that worship
the sun as it performs its great disappearing act
than to stand on oil-black asphalt
before a temple built to worship
an entirely different sort of green thing.
We pass the time by talking about
small stuff, which is not the same
as small talk. Things like how we
loved blowing the fluff from dandelions
and not understanding why
anyone wouldn’t want
more sunbeam-yellow flowers
dotting their lawn.
Things like how fortuitous it was
to be alive during such a rare
celestial conjunction but not as lucky
as I felt to be spending a few more
hours in Sylvie’s company, which I leave
unspoken.
I. First Contact
By first contact (we had together learned
a new vocabulary of the heavens), we stare
upward, eyes sheltered behind our eclipse glasses.
We speak in soft voices about the most awesome
things we had seen in the natural world. For Sylvie,
it was a pod of gray whales off Cape Cod, twenty feet
from her boat, rising from the black depths
like fugitive islands and spouting
in unison; their cool breath settling on her
skin like dew in the summer heat.
I wondered what they thought
of the sun, Sylvie says. Imagine seeing it
for just a few minutes each day
and then back into the cold dark.
I can imagine this.
For me, it was seeing a Girl
with Serious Eyebrows at a campground
in Michigan, but this, too, I leave unspoken.
Instead, I tell her it was driving through Big Sur
in the fall, waves crashing on the rocks
below, fog shrouding the coast redwoods
and spruces, tall and silent
like the ghosts of a race of giants.
II. Second Contact
A reverent hush, then, as the disc of the moon
obscures the face of the sun, bringing a premature
dusk and with it the chirping of crickets
and nightbirds singing their twilight hymns.
And I consider how many things
had to coincide in the Great Clockwork for us
to bear this witness. The moon must be exactly
the right size, viewed from a city park
in Clarksville, Tennessee, two hundred and fifty
thousand miles away, to perfectly cover
the sun, which hangs in the expanse ninety-three million
miles distant. The paths of the moon
and sun must harmonize precisely as they
traverse space. My path
must synchronize precisely with the path
of the Girl with Serious Eyebrows at a campground
in Michigan as we drift across
the land and we must see each other
true, our naked hearts humming
the same note of hunger.
We sit close, the warm skin
of our arms touching, in the sudden cool
and shade of the penumbra,
celestial bodies traveling
through their orbits.
III. Totality
Now it’s nearly dark as night
in the middle of the afternoon,
the air as still as the interval
between breaths.
A few feet away a squirrel sits, tail flitting,
and I think how wonderful
that in our short lives on this planet, we get
to experience this together
and unexpectedly, I begin crying
at the unimaginable marvel of this moment
and I’m almost ashamed
until I glance sidelong
and Sylvie is wiping tears
from behind her glasses. A tear strays
down her cheek and I reach over
and with my good hand brush it
away as gently as though
it’s a raindrop fallen
on the page of a book.
IV. Third Contact
Now the taken light
returns, saffron as if filtered
through the smoke
of some great fire that
lays bare a forest so that new
things can flower.