by Timothy Birdnow

4/12/2024

I wrote this right after the eclipse but set it aside for a while to take a fresh look. Great art, be it poetry or music or painting or whatnot, has more than one thing you will get out of it if you look at it and that was what I was attempting to do here. Also I wanted to write a kind of biblical tale of the eclipse. See what you think:

Apoceclipse

4/12/2024

Get yourself up, they told me, and behold the death of the light
come and see they scolded me, so I went for the afternoon night

And a great multitude of people, all our nation with cars in low gear
joined together in the great migration to watch the sun's light disappear

The road was was so long; a stream of endless taillights
the engines sang their sad songs as the desperate souls took flight
Start, stop, start at the command of the red warning lights
Like the dripping sand of the hourglass time slipped away in small bites

For hours so it passed and my legs started to cramp
but there was never a rest stop, no sign of an off ramp
there was nothing but the flashing of the stream of red lamps
we kept creeping along as if under a spell, an
enchantment

hour after hour we crept to the dark
like the souls being ferried by Charon, soon to debark

The time was growing short as the hourglass neared dry
I would not make the fort even if my truck could fly
my plans I must abort or the great thing would pass me by
I found a stretch athwart the road and peered up at the sky

The night had taken a bite out of the light

Like Satan devouring souls the sun was turning into night
a round black hole chipped right out of our sight
and slowly but surely the dark one snapped another bite
to swallow up the light in hios orgy of delight

The crowd was silent as the astral specter fed
and watched the stellar violence with very few words said
they watched the grave defilement as the light appeared quite dead
as Diana feasted on the bones and dined on stellar bread

Then, as if on Calvary upon that holiest of day
the sun turned off her light, with one last glorious ray
A starburst pattern, radiant against the lunar night
then all was gone, like a shade was drawn and it
disappeared completely from our sight

The orb of night bleeding tears of light
Dark speck in God's sight
murdering the light
but the star of our birth was not done with the fight

It wasn't gone, oh no!
the mighty Helious still put on a show!

Around the usurper moon there appeared a crown of piercing thorns
placed upon the head of light, a glory to adorn
the darkness had failed and all it's schemes were derailed and the darkness lay bleeding and torn
the beast gone to Jerusalem but facing a
conundrum,never to fully be born.

The darkness held as long as it was able
overcome by it's great struggle it fell right off the table
the sunlight poured out of the bowl, was dished out with a ladle
like that ancient star that hung above the mighty Kings birth stable.

Then the light came back in all of it's splendor
the glory of ages would never surrender
the warming fingers like a mother's, so tender
and the darkness now gone but we must remember

Everyone simply turned round and left
the roadside so full now was bare and bereft
of sky gazers intent on the astral scroll's cleft
of the crime of the night and the light's seeming theft

O simple Man when will the lesson you learn
or will you forget and in darkness will burn?
you see but are blind, you never do learn
what will you do when it soon comes your turn?

I take to the road but follow another path
It is a heavier load but I hope to avoid all the wrath

was it the sun that was shadowed or our minds and our hearts?
is it the sky that was cleft or our reason that parts?
who are we to forsee, with all of our arts
when the great eclipse comes and it all falls apart?

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:13 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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