August 21, 2017

Aug 11 2017

The path of totality

cuts a dark slash

through middle America.

Which has me wondering

about omens, and portents

and momentous signs

in these troubled times

of guns and drugs and high anxiety;

when the heavens align

and day becomes night

and bird song ceases.

When the solid ground beneath our feet,

the flat earth

every sense insists we inhabit,

will all at once become

a small round planet

hurtling through space;

and we, its puny passengers

looking out.

And in the eerie silence, a minute's grace

when we are privileged to gaze upon vast astronomical objects

wheeling through the cosmos

in their great ponderous arcs.

The serendipity of distance

when the moon intersects with the sun,

covering it so exactly, one can only imagine

that beauty is intrinsic

to how the universe works.

While a dark calm descends

as if the earth stood still;

the sun blacked-out, and its corona revealed,

seething

with brilliantly tinselled light.

And the blind leading the blind

who are bold enough to look.