I align binoculars;
my son adjusts a paper plate.
Together,
not quite magic,
not precisely science,
we summon the image of the Sun
and the small, hard, black spectacle.

The moment feels carnival
and calamity.
The eye sees and knows
but the heart cries peril
at that transient, cunning injury.
It imagines the Eternal, the True
bearing the gaping wound
of the contingent, the happenstance.

The eye comprehends,
assesses, proceeds.
But the heart lingers,
returns,
observes the aberration
pass slowly across.

I explain occultation and eclipse.
I explain alignment and conjunction,
and before my mind I see the universe
like tumblers on a slot machine.
A googol of tumblers,
with a googol of symbols,
infinite payouts, infinite busts.

The Sun, Venus, Earth it goes,
as seen on any news report.

But I show him:
The Sun, light, Venus, shadow,
Earth, lens, plate, reflection,
retina, nerve, lobe, brain,
awareness.

And I consider for myself:
time, region, culture, weather,
Moon, collision, gasses, spin,
eleven dimensions knotted one way,
parents — two, four, eight, a billion,
contention, extinction, expansion, mutation,
discovery, tectonics, blossoms, June,
Japan, stamps, a note, a call,
A promise, a plan,
A son, a father.

And I know forever,
for all eternity,

(or for ten minutes, until I forget,)

Improbable is all there is.
Unlikely is all.

I would keep each of my days
As a stone.
Some, river worn pebbles, oval and smooth.
Others dark,  jagged flint or shale.

The days I wandered
Would effuse the sharp scent of pine.
The days I began to love
Would flame a fierce cinnamon light.
Many would be grey, heavy, and ordinary.

I would know
This one missing,
This one three times thrown
And brown crusted with dry blood.
This one sucked on,
Held in cheek,
Rolled on tongue,
Explored to the smallest divot.

They would be worth having,
All of them,
Even for a room full of stones.
Each one substantial,
Appropriate.

A comfort
Come the week of my death,
I would pile them in heaps
By the water
And throw them
One by one
Back into the sea.