Eclipse

it was like dying.
without pause or preamble,
silent as orbits,
a piece of the sun vanished.
a lemon slice lost;
in its place,
flaming phosphorus.
blackbirds fled to their roosts.
my surroundings dissolved
into dusky deep indigo.
alpenglow painted
the beach's bare dunes.
it was the last sane moment
of my life.

the world was wrong.
the beach grass glowed golden:
every detail-
stem, head, and blade,
shone artificially distinct-
an art photographer's print.
the sky was navy.
my hands were silver.
the distant waves black india ink.
everything was lost.
i fell down a chute of time.

a lustrous leaf loosed
blowing across the day-star;
a luminous lens cover.
my brain's hatch slammed,
my eyes dried,
my arteries drained,
my lungs collapsed.
i was a dying man
rotating, orbiting,
embedded in the planet's crust,
while the earth rolled down.

my mind was light-year's distant.
i had, it seemed,
once loved the planet and my life,
but could no longer remember their ways.

the world imploded.
i knew a superior light
had usurped the sun's throne.
trees withered,
sand became glass.
i was alone in eternity.

i grabbed my bucket and shovel-
grammar and lexicon-
and blundered about the beach,
scrawling in the surf,
but writing
the breadth and simultaneity
of such an ethereal event
was like scribbling a crayola sketch
on a construction-paper Christmas card-
the angel of the Lord,
the glory of the Lord,
the multitude of the heavenly host-
shepherds wouldn't be sore afraid.

my mind warped,
reeling through space.
the universe,
the clockwork of ceaseless spheres,
was overcome with stupefying,
unauthorized urgency.

i screamed!
seeing it happen,
knowing it was coming,
couldn't prepare me
for the dizzying dispatch
with which my retinae
carried the blinding image
of her supernoval beauty
to my brain.