TWO MINUTES IN THE BOOM LIGHT
We, here in Missouri, have been struggling to describe it, to come up with the words for last Monday when the moon slid neatly across the sun like the lid on a - what - manhole?
Annie Dillard said it better. In 1982, she wrote about an eclipse in her collection, “Teaching a Stone to Talk.” She didn’t mention anything about manholes but described how “the sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover.” And how snow-covered mountains rose from valleys of orchards and golden slopes.
We don’t have mountains in Missouri, but we have parks. Zoe and I went to one of those. We took some stupidly expensive chicken salad and some cake, and we spread our blanket out on the violets.
The sun was across the road in front of us, hanging over a shooting range. For that time being, its light sliced off the roofs and bonnets of cars — red ones and blue ones, white ones and green ones; it flashed in their mirrors, then bounced back to fizzle in our eyes.
“I’m looking this way, “ I said, shuffling around to face, instead, a small wood. It wasn’t much; a few trunks, some low-hanging boughs and, until a man in a neon t-shirt walked into the frame, it was pretty. Little birds flicked in the oaks and they pecked in the flowers. But if only that helicopter would shut up. If only the boy on his mower would ride on home.
So I was doing my best to block out these things, staring and staring at the wood like it was some kind of television “Is he going to move,” I said. “Must we have our eclipse eclipsed by that neon orange shirt?” He and his friend were deep in their phones. The friend had a guitar but he wasn’t playing.
“It’s getting freaky,” Zoe said. She was right. A little wind was happening; a tiny chill had come in. It was time to put down my cake.
“What is this like?” I said, rooting for a simile as the light began to change. Not just its color, which brought lavender to mind, but its fabric — so strange; so oddly manufactured. And for me at least, so achingly sad. The ride-on mower had gone quiet, the helicopter had hitched up on some roof and the shirt had calmed down; its earlier disregard tempered by a dab of mauve. The little birds had gone and the shadows were the blackest, crispest shapes you ever saw. Black like ink, like oil.
I stood up, got off my blanket and rose to my feet. In a moment, that light would be gone altogether; we’d be back to our chicken and our cake. The mower would resume, the cars would carry people away. Someone said it will be two decades before that strange spectacular takes place over these coordinates again. Will there be violets then?
AB - 4.12.24