The spring eclipse dusts off our pagan instincts.
Highway procession of carpooling pilgrims
all burning exhaust fumes as incense. The napes

of necks anointed with warding zinc. Soon, our picnic
blankets set to rest. Cyanotype blueprints laid out
to capture pinhole shadows sickled through fingers.

We gather now in waiting for wrong light. The upturned day.
Gold lacquer spilt on the forest floor: adder-tongues
and garter snakes’ flickering kisses. Unset sunset

on the river, reflecting in a heron’s eyes. And then the sky—
as promised—falling. Upon us amateur eschatologists.
End-times enjoyers risking retinal burns. Pass the dark glasses.

New twilight oozes over the afternoon. Slow yolk,
world egg. Keep saying there’s a crack in everything
and I’ll bloody show you where the light gets in.

We aren’t sure whether we should sing. Everything
earthbound’s vision turned to somewhere no beast
ought to see. That cyclops gaze. That bright iris

beset by solar flares the optimistic pink of strip-mall sunsets
or sashimi as it meets the tongue like another, colder, tongue.
Strange tide felt too far from any sea. The moon pushing in

like love into a poem. So insistent we could reinvent night,
while the sun flees the scene smothered in lovebites.
Leaving all of us inside our onliness. O it doesn’t make sense

to be not afraid. To be not reaching blindly. Hands clasped
in breathless dark. With somebody with whom to hope
these days will go on taking days and days and days.