Eclipse.

I wish I could have been there! But that would have been very expensive and time-consuming. However, it was possible to merge my vivid recollections of the near-total eclipse we experienced in the UK Midlands in August 1999 with the  excitement conveyed by several videos of this month’s eclipse. That combination made this a pleasure to write

  Keon Gibson, an intern for the National Centre 
for Atmospheric Research, 

shot the moment of totality through a telescope 
atop Casper Mountain, Wyo., on August 21. 

The corona stretches around the moon-blocked sun.

Image from Science News website 21 August 2017

Those who witnessed it

said it was like nothing else!

No photograph nor video

(and there were very many)

did justice, they said,

to the 2minutes and 40 seconds

of sheer wonderment,

surprise and joy

at the reliably predicted

cosmic spectacle.

Thankfully it was a clear day

over the terrain

that was fortunate enough

to lie within in its path.

So huge numbers of the intrigued,

the informed and the curious

were able to be enraptured

by that brief, astonishing,

daytime darkness.

Came the precisely appointed time;

A voracious moon

ate silently into

that far more powerful light-giver

and beautifully, temporarily overwhelmed it.

All around grew dimmer and dimmer.

Birds quietened,

as the human observers would have done

had they not been so excited!

(Historically it would have been terror

that dominated the response;

but we are a knowing people

who can prepare ourselves

for these rare dramas

in pre-determined places).

Howling dogs

made for an eeriness

which, if we were less informed,

would add to a palpable fear

that the world was about to end.

But knowing the darkness would pass,

we could revel in amazement

that the orbits, the relative sizes and distances

of our star, planet and moon

gave rise to this glorious phenomenon

of the sun’s prominences,

seen edging the moon

with the splendour

of disinhibited dance.

Then all too soon, totality passed. But wait,

another spectacle follows in its wake:

a fresh burst of incandescence announces

the sun’s reassertion of its life-giving rôle.

Comes forth a celestial diamond ring,

blazing as no earthly jewel ever can.

More glory!

Then as the dark disc moves away

there are moments to reflect anew

on the multitude of extraordinary attributes

that make this ‘blue marble’ planet of ours

so exquisitely benign,

and give the Creator praise!