April 9, 2024

after the eclipse

I don’t know what I expected—a drum solo of birds? a corn stalk to erupt,
full-spanned, out of the dormant garden?—but what I know is when the light
came back, I was already missing the suspense, and the sea of spectacled seers
across the world leaning back into lawn chairs, into each other. I might have
stayed there, dog-paddling in an eddy of dolor, clutching the last straws
of the day. None of my photographs had turned out—a haze, mostly, 
an out-of-focus tangerine—and I carried the needling regret of not having 
gone the distance for the whole show. It was only later, climbing into bed, 
that I shook myself free of what hadn’t been. Maybe it was tiredness, or else 
my eyes adjusting to the dark, finding a window, a door, my own hands.