Dark. Sweet. The Full Eclipse.

In daylight the sun disappeared.

and from nests the owls called.

The coyotes howled, dogs barked in the distance.

But darkness was more than the movements

of planets.

In darkness, I was in the forest

along the snake of a suddenly black path.

and the silence for one moment of night

was the sound of animals

rustling through dry leaves, rooting along the path,

movements of creature life, great and small,

always there.

Fear lived in that moment

the sun disappeared.

Even snakes returned to their dens.

For a moment,

the parrots were black,

the roosters silent,

and the world had a tremor.

Just as quickly, behind the darkness covering sun,

I found myself

in wild fog, clouds moving away with red light.

I will never again be in that momentary place

of total eclipse, not in my life.

Now, looking at the birds red and blue,

the color of sky in water,

the green unbroken branches,

I am still on the path,

missing the depth

of every mystery that continues

through the galaxy,

and every night when the owls call out

I remember that moment,

in daylight when the coyotes howled,

the workings of some infinity

not of my known world,

that dark, sweet moment

in the splendid planetary breathing

where I was walking on the path

here, near the water,

that brief time, everything as I said,

Dark. Sweet.