by Franklin Murdock
An eclipse can change so much.
The world, with its wall of horizons,
sinks into a desolate posture
truly shocking
by how natural it looks.
The shadow of the cosmos
ubiquitous blanket,
like the pride of Icarus
falls wanting,
willing for something purer,
making promises to God
only to break them
without hesitation, retraction,
attrition.
All nations are one under this silhouette,
strikingly different than the dreams
uttered by their fathers before them.
Identity lost
Culture, a liability
the individual dies
and Gestalt is born into social gravity.
The land falls silent
and people weep and scream,
murmur ancient words,
cold renditions and recitations
of "eulogy" and "inevitability"
of "threat," "cause," and "effect"
of "deus ex machina"
and they die unburied
in this place,
once a beautiful meadow of ferns
now transubstantiated into monster
from which the creatures,
no longer people,
flee.