Eclipse
Neither Nostradamus nor Edgar Cayce could have predicted
last night’s full lunar eclipse –
their visions reached just so far.
At first she was bold,
sailing even-keeled across the heavens, keeping watch,
then she was touched,
then stained slowly, like ink bled into a napkin
till all her light slipped off but for a slim crescent at the bottom of her bowl,
like the eye lid of a sleeping child,
and then even that shut,
so that she disappeared,
gone, vanished at the height of her radiance like a fairy princess
run off between courses at the ball,
determined to live a life of adventure.
It has taken astronomers and mathematicians,
Eye to scope and graph wrestling gnarly calculus,
Buoyed and propelled by the accumulated knowledge of a hundred generations
To know that she’d return,
Once again gathered in her silver silks,
to continue her vigilant sojourn of the night.
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