TOTAL ECLIPSE

Candle-smoked pane of glass to view a ring of light;

A circus hoop on fire for a tiger to leap through;

Orbital motion foretold with atomic clock precision;

A new moon’s umbral shadow cast on earth

Tracks a round silhouette and cat eyes

Gathered in silence and darkness.

Minutes of time to see the paler fire wall,

Prominences and filaments,

Spewed out and seething,

An angry lion’s ruff;

An inferno around a black hole;

A sun eclipsed by a moon;

Reason eclipsed by myth.

Deep in the forest, light returns,

Cat eyes subside and slink away,

An unlit face slips out of sight

And in deep time will be too far away

To cover the sun.

© cmheuer, 2015