Solar Eclipse

to look to the sky. Finally, everyone

stopped bickering and stood together.

From the hills of Virginia to the streets

of New York, you could hear everyone

breathe beneath their arguments. As the

moon bowed to the sun, reasons unraveled.

Without the noise, you could feel everything

come alive a little bit more. We couldn’t

look directly into such a powerful truth.

The sky dimmed. The ancients must have

thought the world was turning inside out.

Or that the gods were deciding if we were an

experiment worth continuing. In our small

backyard, we had a newborn and an old

friend who recently turned eighty. And

the quiet angel of life arced between us,

the way the moon, steadfast and eternal,

arced between the tangled Earth and the

fiery sun, saying without saying, Different

as you think you are, you’re all the same. And

the sun, coming out again, though it never

left, seemed to say, Remember, every

loss and dark turn is an eclipse of where

you think you’re going. Then the light

at the center of everything

kept pulling us along.

*Photo credit: Pixabay