On Missing It, The Eclipse That Is, Bloody as it Was and Awfully Full

On Missing It, The Eclipse That Is, Bloody as it Was and Awfully Full

Say something warm.  Hello.  The world

was full of harm until this wind

placated grass and put the fish to rest.

                                                                High Grass Prairie 

                                                                Richard Hugo

Blood, you moved over us cooing, cooling

close and though we didn’t notice you we couldn’t

not know you were pouring out

over us head and toe and torso, and most of all

those moments you’d go colder into cold

owning your bold shadow, your own globe while we

closed over your face, slow, slow how

going for a blow by blow of only the cheekbone

and chin bone and bone above the brow, and too

the body and all our limbs we try to let off 

the hook on earth below, decreasing sleep, our only

practice at being dead, sleeping instead 

with the steady temperance, the congestive spin, 

and the going round after round before the bell, never 

a moment in the corner (ex-

cept for those in your brief completed umbra

when others look full on or full off) we who believe 

we’ve seen it all or at least enough to bow off 

and back away like everyone in the presence of the queen

whose gaze never strays (though tell me how

would we know) from the tops

of our head to the tips of our feet, stained

ever stained in the blood and black of the rare event

and honestly no amount of bleach,

plunged like tea steeping, is necessary or even 

needed.  Right?  We can keep our wounding?  Tell me, even though

I missed the actual seeing, I’m still (no need, please,

true?) eased, my sleeve wicking up your bleeding.