Full Moon Lunar Eclipse
A Poem from the Archive
Full moon lunar eclipse!
crowed my roommate on his way in
and let the door thud closed behind him.
You should go and check out the eclipse.
What
I said from my room.
I didn’t hear him.
You should go and check out the eclipse.
I have a supposed interest in the planets.
I’m supposed to have known about an eclipse
before it started.
I’m really too exhausted to move from my
writing seat, which is really a
luxurious futon couch, which is really
a womb.
But I’m interested in an eclipse.
I’m not sure what an eclipse looks like
and I’m supposed to be interested anyway.
What kind of eclipse
I ask as I mope into the living room,
which brings a big grin.
What else kind of eclipse would it be
he says
and at that moment I realize I really know
nothing about eclipses
and I mutter something which may have sounded
a little like a fan being unplugged.
A full moon lunar eclipse
he says.
I’d just been out to fetch a coffee
a little while ago
and didn’t notice any hubbub going on
in the streets,
as if the eclipse of the moon might
cause a river of Saturday evening passers by
to cease and stare collectively at the sky,
pointing and gasping
like an actual god were speaking to them,
mouthing the secrets of the cosmos.
So had it just happened
I wondered but I said
Can you see it from the door
and he said
You can see it from the corner.
I looked at my shoes which I had
just removed
and thought for a nice long second
that maybe I would check out the
full moon lunar eclipse
later on
when I was considering going out anyway,
although I wasn’t feeling especially up to it
emotionally
and I said which block
and he said
Second Avenue.
I looked at the calendar
right by the door and
sure enough full moon
but nothing about an eclipse.
Oh well, I guess you had to have heard
the buzz going around about an eclipse
before it happened
or you could have just looked up
and not under when you went out
a few minutes ago to get a coffee.
So I decided to make the move.
I decided it would be nice to take a little walk
down the street and smoke a cigarette
and look at the eclipse
and then I realized I didn’t have any more
cigarettes and then I realized that
was the perfect excuse to put on my shoes
and go back out
so I did,
and I walked down the block
and when I got to the corner I looked up
and there it was.
Full moon lunar eclipse.
Well, not a full lunar eclipse
or not yet anyway. The sky was still a grey dusk
and a faint red glow had fallen over the moon.
A few other people were looking up but
not the whole river of bustle,
just here and there probably
a few people looking up and enjoying the site.
Beautiful I thought
the way the shadow almost appears
like a veil over her face.
I walked down a block to St. Marks
and bought some rollies at the news stand there
and while I was waiting to get helped
there was this older man paying for his purchase,
a New York Post and a TV Guide.
Not really that old, probably late forties,
maybe fifties,
but losing his hair and just looking like
maybe he’d been living in the same room
in the same building in the same
neighborhood for quite some time,
and just something I got in glancing at
his face that the city had stopped
breathing in him
and become a frozen mass upon his body.
That’s me soon.
The insight exploded so forcefully as a thought
in my head that I may
have spoken it under my breath.
And I paid for my pouch
and walked out
and opened the plastic wrapping and
threw it away in the can on the corner
and loosened the bag with a few whacks
and opened it up and began
rolling one up and the whole time
utterly entranced in the image of the
TV Guide Man as some kind of sign post.
Of course he may not be unhappy,
another inner voice countered.
It’s not about the TV Guide Guy being unhappy
you morons,
said the loudest inner voice,
which was mine.
It’s about me being unhappy.
I am so unhappy.
I kept walking and rolling the cigarette and
suddenly it occurred to me what it was
that was different between people
who are always going and
people who never move.
People that never move
become blind to seeing the remarkable.
That is why if you know how to look at them
a traveler can appear to be childlike,
naked and glistening with the shine of
a reveller running under a waterfall.
By the time I got home, I had rolled the cigarette
and was ready to light it as I took off my shoes
and sat back down in my womb
and realized then that I had walked back home
from the smoke shop
without once looking up at the sky
to check how the full moon lunar eclipse
had developed since the last time I had looked.
I figured I would make another trip out there
as soon as I finished my coffee.
– East Village, NYC.
8 Nov 2003
