| We come to the edge of a circle of sand,
where, absorbed in hourglass research,
a lone child strains to reveal the strange
rites of passage, falling grains through
the riddle of twilight's bony fingers.
Quietly, we take our places in the front row,
our little party of three venturing outside
her gated world, she and I, and another
- a smooth handled cane propped skyward -
remarking time's vellum on a park bench.
Children emerge from surrounding darkness,
perching on the backlit limbs of slides and bars;
sequestered in a sycamore's branched embrace,
the great disc'd moon shudders with anticipation.
A child's squeal arcs overhead, then a hush.
Night's curtain rises on the twists of inky limb
puncturing the lower quadrant of that blotter moon,
spilling its black dyes onto an empty white plate.
'The last full eclipse of the millennium', I say softly,
though her gaze remains lost in the sand-shadows.
'There!', I say, pointing at the unfolding spectacle
across the page of night's most oft quoted stanza;
vanishing footprints over timeless dunes of silence
when, perchance, earth rushes to a fated rendezvous.
'Yes', she says, 'It's a moon, alright. It is a moon.'
What the changing light reveals to her attentive eye,
things near on which she can rely; shapes of vague figure
- a shirtless child in the upper lattice on the tall slide -
worried they might fall, or chill in the night's withering air
while the cloaking hour passing overhead records itself.
Half unmasked, the light turns cold and we depart,
stopping now and then, glancing now and then
at the art of this night restoring itself to the familiar;
then walking on and slipping back into her gated world,
pathways strange enough in the half-light of eclipse.
At her door, we will turn one last time to a child's moon,
the very faintest trace of hour on its brow, a wisp of grey hair,
as she stares blankly at the changeless sky in all-moon's light.
'It is', I say, 'the last eclipse till then.' 'Oh', she says, 'Till when?'
her cheeks flushed, eyes wide, in the dark light by the door.
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