A poem I wrote for the 2024 eclipse

When I stepped

Into the day for my walk,

The clock said 1:35 PM.

But what is that?

Numbers we decide to attach

To some immeasurable thing.

When I returned, the same training

Made me check the clock

Once more and

Shock:

It told the same story,

The second-hand bumping

Up and down, shallow movement,

Not proceeding,

A reminder of

The human fable we form

Around the passage of what we call

Day and night, mid-morning,

Dawn, afternoon, dusk,

All of it.

How long was my walk?

It was not for me to know.

There are no words I know of

To measure

The sunlight on my arms,

The quantity of skyward birdsong,

The way I regarded

A vividly green inchworm.

In naming and numbering it,

We forget we can brush it

Away, look

Instead to the sky and wildflowers,

The spider, the web.

Each

Second, hour, day is a trove

Of stories,

Each

A coffer of

Shades and values, the

Forested fragrance and

Treed roundelay

All new, plus déjà vu plus

Blossoming of memory: that

Plain, good day

From childhood

Or from just last week, that day

Of coffee cake and a

Rain shower and

Chiaroscuro amidst the bloodroot.

— CATHERINE S. VODREY

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