The Path of Totality: A Poem

This one might make some people mad

So, believe it or not, I wrote this poem LAST year. Before the U.S. election in November. Before [waves hands agitatedly in the direction of all-the-things]. And specifically before the 2024 “Great American Solar Eclipse.” Which was a total solar eclipse that was visible over an unusually huge swath of populated land from Mexico to Canada, and which basically bisected the continental United States with, what looked from space, like an elongated shadow.

Those of us who happened to live directly within the corridor of that shadow became very familiar with the phrase “path of totality”. It was printed all over the merch from community-hosted events in these super tiny towns that had never so much as spoken the word “tourist” in their board meetings before, but which were now looking at hosting more of these than they had ground space to accommodate the tents for. The university I work for literally just cancelled classes and declared a kind of local holiday, because they knew the roads were going to be too clogged for anyone who didn’t live within walking distance to get to work. So I ended up watching this incredible natural event from behind my apartment building.

To pass some time in the days surrounding it, I wrote and recorded a poem. As one does.

I also put a link to the recording up on my then-YouTube channel, my harp arrangement channel. I’ll include the link here. Mainly so you can verify for yourself when it was uploaded. So that, if someone DOES get mad at me, you can all see very clearly that I wrote the poem BEFORE certain entities began rolling back that whole freedom-of-expression clause in certain founding documents. This is literally just a reprint of something that already existed, and was already very much publicly available. So it obviously couldn’t POSSIBLY be a targeted critique, in ANY WAY of things, events, or people that had not yet come into the position/s they are currently in. What am I, a time-traveler? A prophet? Is that really where you want to go?

I’m simply a gal who needs content. And I have a well-established precedent on this blog of sourcing my content from older poems and pieces that I have already previously posted elsewhere on the internet.

I’m also deeply heart-broken about the recent massacre of school children in Minnesota (and, obviously, about the ludicrously transphobic way it’s being covered). This incident hit me harder, for some reason, than any of them has since Uvalde. And, I don’t know, something about it all just made me think of this poem.

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Solar Eclipse by Howard Russell Butler, USA, 1925

The Path of Totality

Written 3/20/2024 for the 2024 “Great American” Solar Eclipse

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When evening-hemmed horizon

Encircles alien noon,

Its sickly glow like headlights shone

Through mucus-hued cocoon,

We sit as in a cauldron,

The air a witch’s brew,

To witness some foretold inversion

Of all we thought we knew.

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But small this scorching portal gapes

To birth a skull so dense!

Though karmic-changed existence pulls

Beyond our wilting tent.

We celebrate, but scarcely pause

To learn from darkness’s view,

Before our blotted stars diverge

From all we thought we knew.

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Meanwhile, though, children bleed and starve,

And cash-choked gnats extort.

Too spent to look ourselves head on,

We plod, react, contort.

In this, the path of “greatness,”

Where celestial lights dance through,

Totality of blight was always

All we thought we knew.

Photo of the eclipse that I took with my crappy phone camera and my non-existent photography skills. The light is interesting, though, especially when you consider that it was the middle of the afternoon. April 8, 2024, Ohio, USA

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