“…brought to dazzling eclipse refulgence…”
–Will Alexander, “A Nexus of Phantoms”

This comes from the NASA website:

The last lunar eclipse of 2010 is especially well placed for observers throughout North America. The eclipse occurs at the Moon’s descending node in eastern Taurus, four days before perigee…

Penumbral Eclipse Begins:   05:29:17 UT
Partial Eclipse Begins:     06:32:37 UT
Total Eclipse Begins:       07:40:47 UT
Greatest Eclipse:           08:16:57 UT
Total Eclipse Ends:         08:53:08 UT
Partial Eclipse Ends:       10:01:20 UT
Penumbral Eclipse Ends:     11:04:31 UT

And in the spirit of things, here is a poem from Ed Roberson‘s wonderful new book To See the Earth Before the End of the World, which was just published by Wesleyan University Press:

LUNAR ECLIPSE

You’ve seen only a planed circle of moon,

the white wafer; the low sky’s flat penny

grow into that dime, flipped in the turn

taken by the earth,

                                     until you see

what’s won from behind its veil of brightness

by the lunar eclipse

                                                 a red marble,

a pinball of blood and it’s your shot, a ball

of red clay before its pinch into a bowl,

what I want to say and its look

that far away from it.

I want to say it suddenly

turns three dimensional with shadow

shaded in at the drawn

earth-curtain’s darkening;

                                             and that darkness

makes shape-informed light clearer rounding out

midnight,      and moon,

                                       once it is that lighted ball,

falls above a night now floored with depth

so dark above you     you can feel the feet

and meter fill with time. New Years confetti each

speck’s fall a galaxy ago back into space.

Space back into space restored    beneath the moon

to here in the shading of eclipse. The distances.

                 We have to feel the spatial in what we see

to see clearly     the eye measure in hands and feet;

                                         as when we kiss,

distance disappears, our eyes close,

and we see bodily

                                in raised detail

a measure deepen into our world

in each other. And what we are

in the shadow the world makes

of our love, by this earth shine, we see

                         ourselves whole, see in whole perspective.

Michael Leong

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Michael Leong is the author of the poetry books e.s.p., Cutting Time with a Knife, Who Unfolded My Origami Brain?, and Words on Edge. His creative work has been anthologized in THE &NOW AWARDS 2: The Best Innovative Writing, Best American Experimental Writing 2018, and Bettering American Poetry, Volume 3. His co-translation, with Ignacio Infante, of Vicente Huidobro’s long poem Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven is forthcoming from co•im•press in late 2019. His critical monograph Contested Records: The Turn to Documents in Contemporary North American Poetry is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press in May 2020. He has received grants from the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts.

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