August 22, 2017

two minutes and forty seconds

It wasn't so much that I thought the world would end or
reset like a metaphorical Pangaea, but I did imagine that afterward,
the landscape would shift toward some new alignment, and the trouble
rippling underneath would smooth out the way a plane does,
clearing the clouds. It's true, we all stopped to gaze through a makeshift lens
as the moon overcame the larger, louder body of the sun, gathering in fields
and on streets, clustered in a shared awe as the hard light cooled and softened.
But it's the fleeting mid-point I'm missing now, those two minutes and forty seconds
we held our collective breath and rested in brief surrender to our uncertain future,
leaning into the great cosmic miracle of our lives, as we were born to do.