Lunar Eclipse - February 20, 2008
Lunar Eclipse in Process. 9:57 P.M. EST - 10:16 P.M. EST
Total Lunar Eclipse, from Outside the Henry School, West Mt. Airy PA. 10:14 P.M. EST
Sarah remembers
there is an eclipse tonight.
We all go outside.
Earth in front of Moon.
Sarah, Gabriel, Sophia.
Boaz is not with us.
Earth in front of moon.
My camera mediates.
Cold air stings my hands.
See Dave Bonta's wonderful pics and description of the eclipse.
I've uploaded the the set of photos to Flickr if you want to look at them in a slideshow or closer up.
Comments
7 comments postedWhat glorious photos, and what a lovely haiku series. (Perhaps not surprisingly, I'm working on my own poem about seeing the eclipse, too...) I love "My camera mediates."
I like the middle stanza. The first time I read it, it seemed sad. Where's Boaz? The next time, it was like the kind of accounting I have to do of my class at fire drills. The clipped "Earth in front of moon" sounds less haiku-ish and more like part of that accounting. You're accounting for heavenly bodies as well as people, and if the Moon and Boaz are both missing, maybe they're off together.
"You are accounting for heavenly bodies as well as people." I love that.
Actually, Boaz happens to be a dog. And only after I've read your comment do I notice that the last line of the first stanza "we all go outside" makes the second stanza not make sense, "Boaz is not with us."
I like the idea that Boaz might be with the moon. Sounds like it could be part of some native myth that dogs go cavorting with the moon during an eclipse.
My writing subconsciously expresses the ambiguous status of Boaz in our household. He is totally beloved, but not one of us. Can we be "all" without him. If our eclipse adventures had been more planned, we would have brought Boaz with us. But in the chaos we left him behind. Which we all remembered when we heard a yelp from the direction of our house.
I like the native myth idea. "Boaz and the Moon."
Hi Shai.
It's Shari from your childhood. Just came by to
visit your website and got blown away by those photos
and in general by your wonderful blog, full of thoughtful
ideas combined with multimedia. A real treat.
Regards to Sarah and the kids and Boaz of course.
Hi there. I just happened upon your site from Drupal.org. Loved the pictures. And a great site. Thanks for the inspiration.
Just watched the 2010 eclipse wow!