Another Eclipse

The moon absconds again,
our planet shearing its light,
leaving the pocked and arid plains
to darkness as blank as its rocks.
The only one of us awake,
I stand on our lawn to watch again.

Once my father leaned close
in a room without light
and pointed through windows to sky,
his breath on my cheek. But he lives
only in the pale flicker of memory.

You sleep, wearied by relief
to be untouched for a few hours
by hands of doctors, your cells
nearly as clean as unroiled water.

Why wake our son?
He’ll see this years from now

in a field I cannot imagine,
hands loose at his sides
as he waits for a sign of returning light.