This is my first poem of the National Poetry Writing Month or NaPoWriMo. Given that it is eight days in to the month, I’m a little behind the eight ball because life has thrown me some recent curve balls. But…I say better late than never!

Today’s poetry prompt was to write a poem that centered around an encounter or relationship between two people (or things) that shouldn’t really have ever met – whether due to time, space, age, the differences in their nature, or for any other reason.

It seemed only fitting then that today I would write about our solar eclipse. Here we only experienced 98.6% totality, but just south of us, there was 100% totality. It is an unlikely and rare encounter, and so, by my estimation, quite suitable for this prompt.

Eclipse

The unlikely meeting 
of the moon and the sun
cast a spell over earth.
Amicable but arresting,
the friendship seemed 
as deep as darkness
and as cool 
as a crisp autumn day. 

Only a thin veneer 
of light could be seen
in the tension
between darkness and light.
But the light 
(or perhaps the darkness)
brought us together—
witnesses of a chance rendezvous—

where two old friends
passed through the shadowlands.
It was not the friendship
that drew us in;
it was the fact that
in their unlikely harmony,
we found solace 
in the serendipity.


—cjpjordan