Eclipse

i

The sun sets behind the earth

     as the mind’s soiled smock of day’s end

tosses heavenward:  it spreads like a finger-painted gull

            and floats on body-heat thermals

            remaining in the air only so long

     before descending as recollection must.  Eyes linger

on the outline of form shifting as memory takes hold—now black,

now white, the nameless glow of sunspots

in the eyes:  all colors of the eclipse

     are of greatest moment.  Mimesis: the shape

of man (image of God)  occludes sunlight as the martyr

attempts recollection. 

The arms spread in the wing-span

     of a featherless bird in flight, but the wings droop. 

Ink stains hands and imprints the brain—white smock turning grey

as sleep convinces mnemon to yield in due season. 

ii

What is a lunar eclipse

     but a promise of passing time? they come

every so often, preceding the lunacy we conceive

through prescription—inscribed

before we had a choice

     that was lost in the flames of a twice-burned house…

it burned from within and without, the divining passions foreordained

and read in the dregs of stale beer

breathed life into similitude

     before the foundations of the earth in the great song

and dance of creation that predicts no change in the immense pleasure

of consummation, and you know what has elapsed… 

the house burned from within and without,

     you see it is a metaphor, a euphemism, I am telling you

something important:  progeny, the still-born, the ill-conceived, the sparse

fecundity that drives them is not all inclusive