Cicadas hang their wings on anything.
You can grab them by their wings, so
my son is finding out, collecting them
by the dozens In a square Tupperware.
We make a ceremony of releasing them
into the grass and dirt. I say, let them find
their mommys and daddys and that’s all
it takes for my son to let go, understanding.
He spent the morning barefoot, scouring
The front yard. We saw one, translucent,
emerging tail first from the bronze, crisp
shell hanging on a tree and I marvel
at birth again.
Last month or so a total eclipse distracted
the world from war and argument. Talk
of where to travel, how to get the funny
3D looking glasses. My friend drove to
Arkansas with her 6 year old son, took
him out of school for the event. Where
I live would be partial, nothing special.
My son’s school would be let out for a
few minutes with the funny glasses
to watch. He is in Kindergarten. Afterwards,
he painted what he saw in watercolor.
Black moon, ¾, sun shining behind, black
clouds, dark sky. He wrote next to it:
I saw the spokeclip. It got dark. I was
skerd. Back in our home, I got the timing
wrong and napped through the historic event.
The next time we have a total eclipse
I will be in my 70s. A moon shading
The sun, near the end of the day.
I was on a flight from Nashville to London
a few years ago. I usually don’t talk
to the passenger beside me, preferring
movie or sleep, but I politely asked
the man next to me where he was going.
He told me a part of Africa I’d never heard of.
He said, nobody’s ever heard of there.
I asked him why he was going.
I’m an eclipse chaser, he said. He was
meeting his son in a remote part of
Africa because that was the ultimate place
to witness that eclipse. He told me
of the other eclipse’s he’d followed and
where they were. I thought, if you were going
to follow a dream, may as well follow the moon
and the sun.
On my way home to Nashville, as the plane was
landing, the sky went dark over my city.
We were flying into the sky during the eclipse.
I imagined the man and his son on a sandy hill
glasses on, dream chasers.