Solar Eclipse Glasses

Posted on by Tricia Knoll

Solar Eclipse Glasses

My doorbell rings. A delivery man vanishes.
He left a bubble-pack of three shades. Red, green,
and black: blood, wealth, and darkness.

 Do not use in daily life when driving or walking.
Made in China. Supervise children at all times.

Who was it who sees through a glass dimly?
Or the actual name of the Egyptian man, the Falsehood
who blinded Truth and was sentenced
to both blindness and serving
as Truth’s doorkeeper forever.
What guards my door?

My dance teacher saw the 1979 eclipse
in Goldendale, Washington, home of faux
Stonehenge. She admonishes me not to toss
my eclipse glasses into a backpack or a purse –
Seeing totality through a nick will blind you.

Is this our mantra today,
what Oedipus learned the hard way?

 

[image: Colleen Pinkski, National Geographic]

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An Vermont poet with a deep love for writing haiku, poetry with feminist and eco themes. Ocean's Laughter (Aldrich Press 2016) combines lyric and eco-poetry to look at change over time in a small town on Oregon's north coast. Urban Wild (a chapbook from Finishing Line Press, 2014) highlights how people and wildlife interact in urban habitat. Broadfork Farm (The Poetry Box) is love poetry for a the creatures and people of a small organic farm in Trout Lake, Washington. In 2018 Antrim House released How I Learned To Be White -- the poetry of introspection into white privilege and Knoll's work to live more fully in a multicultural world. How I Learned To Be White received the Gold Prize for Poetry Book Category for Motivational Poetry in the Human Relations Indie Book Prize for 2018. Website: triciaknoll.com