That, Winter Lunar Eclipse

14 degrees below zero in our backyard
The black midnight air is paralyzed like glass
Laid flat on a metal slab
Still for its hammer autopsy.

My son and I stand side by side
Shivering from the cold blows
Amidst the barren Oaks
Staring up from here, a rocky surface,
To there, the soft eternity filled with universe

A full moon above us
And rather than its usual white disc
Hung flat
Against a wall like a keepsake dinner plate

This moon is rimless and spongy
Orange as a squeezed fruit
Fully eclipsed from Earth’s shadow

No longer in the sky
But clinging from a vine
Hovering just below
The tree tops of our world
Where the night has lost its divide

While deer float by
Starved for gravity.

“I’ve never seen the moon like that before.”
I say to my son
And he replies “Me neither, dad.”

My 18 year old boy
His face less its oval yawn
More a sharpened angle like a raven clean shaven
His hair a dream of curls like Apollo
His hazel eyes even to me
Or should I say meeting me

With justified suspicion
A self-portrait vandalized by this art

Shape shifting time
From fear to wisdom and back
Like a sword striking a shield
Until the defender is reduced to his knee

Beaten down
Peeking up
Behind this growing shadow
Cast
From boy to man.

Copyright © | Year Posted 2019



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