Total Lunar Eclipse

During a Total Lunar Eclipse

It’s happening right at this very moment—

something stunable, a succession that occurs

so rarely I bet festivals are planned

around it.  I bet there is a woman

dancing nude beneath it, in its copper

dust, its umber making everything

look like blood.

But it’s cloudy here.  It's heavy, and the wind is gusting

enough that the deck chairs are tipped

over and skitting across the boards like the dry

oak leaves I raked out of the corner

of the fence.  (There isn’t an oak in sight

of me, only maples.  I wonder how

they arrived.) 

Now I keep going out near the wind

to look up for some thin tear in the continuous

pall, some hem of light showing

beneath the skirt, something sexy enough

to penetrate just by it being there, unknown,

like a tower in the middle of the woods

where this time it’s not pulling

up to get in, it’s pulling down, pulling away

at the foundation one rock at a time, piling

each handled stone at the edge

of the clearing like cordwood, like something

saved for a different day, until there’s a hole

broad enough in the old tower for one

head and shoulder, going under to look up

at no floors, no ceiling at all, just circular wall

leading up to sky amplified.  And a break

in those clouds, and the moon

what I’ve come all this way to see,

wearing the nude woman’s red shawl,

shyly dressing with what had been laid

away on the draft, then snagged on a limb

of wind, fixed briefly, on the new tower.

Old stones, new rise.  It’s slow until it’s over. 

Until what’s in front

collapses.  Until it finally reveals what’s been

behind it all along: that woman, swaying still,

holding her shawl again, stained, o, with moon.