Eclipse

A poem
by George Amabile

1

An evening with friends. In the silence
beyond Anderson's chair—his face vital with stories
of wheat barges, lumber camps, the wild,
slow years coming of age—snow
is floating down through shadowy elms
into the lit street, and though we are close
enough to feel each other's breath,
a wish to be alone and apart
enters my mind like the iced edge of the moon.

2

Somewhere a clock is chiming. Twelve
cold strokes clear my head. Flakes
continue to fall. I stand
breathing their chilled awe till my face
grows numb and the snow begins
to fall, too, through the warm gloom
of my body. Suddenly
the whole flickering sift
stalls, and I'm rising, weightless
through a sea of sparkling facets
adrift, but drawn toward the clean, hard
core of the streetlight's diamond.

3

I'm there, walking
through chambers and echos of ice
but a voice, far off, breathing
belief into Blake's Everything
that lives is holy thaws
my flawless vision of light
and cold, so that brilliance
like a glass house under rain
runs together and spills when I blink
warm, emotionless tears.
Perfected flakes melt on my lips.
My ears ache. I watch
the keen air cloud my breath.
As it dies away, I move
toward gifts, ghosts, things that live
at the tips of tongues and fingers.

4

Collapsed in the arms of a stuffed chair
I wait for comfortable darkness to drain the chill
from my clothes . . . eyelids close, latch
the rickety gate of my grandfather's lettuce garden.
I comb the loose crisp leaves
for bugs to burn in the pointed light
of a magnifying glass
under cold sun, in slums by the sea.
But something knocks, knocks
against the walls of the world
and a patch of scrambled fencewire
burns through to a stand of elms at the window.

Even through chilled glass
I can feel the rough lift of boughs
rising out of the crystalized heart
of light, all that fierce purity
and I think of seeds, pressed
by a voice, a touch
into the body's intimate night
how they spring to life
even before we know
we need them. I sit listening
to the pause and pulse of blood
under these flickering images
that melt like snow as dawn climbs
from gray to pale gold
filling the room
                                        with sunlight
and the shadows of trees.

"Eclipse" was first published, in a different version, in Blood Ties, The Sono Nis Press, Vancouver: 1972

Copyright 2006 by George Amabile