A Diamond Ring

Your orbs are hollow
invisible behind
your clip-on lunettes
I hope those Armanis
are UV-filtered

or else the retinas
can smoke and burn
like wet rope-net
in a driftwood fire
the ocular humor
congealing like
soft-boiled eggs

Once in a blue
moon things can
line up this way
one body like
an umbrella
sheltering another
We rarely encounter
anything more
perfect and complete
than this alignment

My eye's apple
my life's sunshine
are considered clichés

A moment before
totality
there appears
a flash a flaring
brilliance at a point
on the circumference
the flickering rim
as though the new moon's
edge had caught fire
the so-called
third contact
or what solar observers
informally term
the diamond ring

It blazes forth
like a hole in one's sight
too bright for the mind
to attribute a color

While looking away
to spare your eyes
you'll see that the sky
is imbued with a violet
that it possesses
at no other time

In a benighted age
the apparition
traversing the heaven
of a long-haired star
or the horrible specter
of this unforeseen twilight
would awake fear and fire
Wouldn't the earth die
without the sunshine?
What knowledge is possible
without Truth's light?
How could one bear
to be forsaken by God?
What has occluded
the warmth of your love?

This no less predictable
and sudden reverse
has destroyed my mind's peace

As the sun gives the energy
on which all life depends
as the sun is Truth's light
the very medium of knowledge
as the sun is God's face
turned away from the many
So your love is the hope
without which I am lost
and blinded in darkness

(June 23-25, 2005)