Penumbra and the Cellar Door
(In which my horses register the Kansas eclipse...)
Pretty word, Penumbra, deserving of a poem
and Cellar Door, two more together, a gift from
some English teacher many many years ago when
I was in third grade, she said the words and said
they were so lyrical and some words, when combined
had that magic beyond the meaning, it cut a pathway
in my mind, though it puzzled me for years until it
didn't and I understood some of what she meant.
The eclipse mooned Kansas yesterday and with the
cardboard eyewear I registered the slight scythe of
sun, the crescent slimmer than any moon on any
Arab flag, and then the word Penumbra flared around
the full black moon, and grass was individualized, no
longer just a pasture, but single stems dimensional.
My horses grazed around me, their grass-pull
squeaks the only sound, one gazed around when
darkness rose among the brome, and said the equine
equivalent of hmmm, went back to grazing. I may
have had a rapture of the dark where I quit breathing
for a moment, but it passed with the moon, and time
began for me again. Thin tattered veils of clouds slid
high and fast across the moonbit sun then it was whole
again and so was I. Penumbra Cellar Door I prayed.
