Near the end of the eclipse

It looks like a shadow of something,
maybe a hand with a cloth
trying to wipe out
an unbearable brightness
from our eyes,
or the curve and feathered breast
of a bird lifting.

I understand how frightening
it must have been
a thousand years ago
to see the moon smudged away,
a soft, inexorable disappearance
like dementia taking the light
from behind the eyes of a friend,
or the sighing end of things
when earth or you or me
gets in the way
of seeing our way home

a lunacy.

But this giving back
of moonshine wiped clean
of all the tears,
the flying of a shadow to roost
in another orbit
around someone else’s love

is inexorable, too,
hope’s revelation,
the greater beauty of light
after an extinguishing.