When Clouds Eclipse the Eclipse I Give in to My Frustration and Write a Bad Poem About the Eclipsed Eclipse in Iambic Pentameter (I Hope) and in Quatrains That Have no Rhyme—or Reason—but That’s to be Expected from a Poseur Poet Who Might be Better at This if She Were to Practice More Rather Than Dabble

 

I have waited all day for the full moon

To rise, to see the promised penumbra.

I have checked my Star Walk app, eager for

The bright orb to rise above the Blue Ridge.

 

I have watched, too, the thickening clouds pile.

Sky Walk says the eclipse has started but

My eyes have no proof, empirical or

Otherwise. Once I see it, will it be

 

In shadow? No devouring beast taking

Bites. Will it be blood red like the others

I’ve seen? Once I watched through a telescope.

That moon wasn’t a full snow moon, instead

 

A gibbous one, an easy mistake. Blood

Red and I understood why ancestors

Cowered in fear. Blood on the moon. Surely

A moonwalker cut himself there but no,

 

That came back to earth trapped in a space suit.

I have waited patiently to see this

Astronomical marvel, and thinning

Clouds promise what to my wondering eyes

 

Should appear but a four point five billion

Year old extraterrestrial. The same

One gazed on by Lucy and some long dead

Neanderthal whose DNA rides in

 

My viscera. Maybe that’s why I can’t

Look away from that shared experience

Across millennia. I’m still waiting.

I have waited all day for the full moon.

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Addendum

clouds like the red sea
parted
penumbral eclipse sighted