Totality:
January 20, 11:05 EDT - Greenville SC

by William C. Burns, Jr.

The Night is ebon and deep
As only the daughters of Janus can be
The Stars laser sharp and impossibly Far

Draco turns from between the Beasts
Slithering as only a dragon can
Dragons
Not the smiley things they show you on PBS
But the Fear gods that you still know in your bones

And it finds the full faced moon
Just left of Orion's belt
The cold sharp as a dragon's tooth
Is eating the face
Eating the light
Leaving a brownish bruise
A smoldering burnt field
Once rich with creamy light

And you're saying
It isn't like that at all
The Moon will come back
How could people be so stupid
How could they not know . . .
Ask yourself now in this
The darkest moment

How do you know

First published in Science Nook
Copyright © 2004, William C. Burns, Jr.

Copyright © 2000, Lorenzo Comolli

William C. Burns, Jr. was born circa the early fifties and raised in and around the rolling hills and glens of the eastern part of the planet and seems to think he functions equally well in both right and left hemispheric modes, creating across a wide spectrum of media -- graphic art, poetry, auto body repair, music, theater, sculpture, raising children, microprocessor interface design, computer code, etc.

Bill holds lots of degrees (mostly Celsius, some Fahrenheit some Kelvin) in areas such as electrical engineering, biomedical engineering and education. He keeps the hounds of starvation at bay by teaching electrical engineering and electrical technology courses for various colleges. He has written thirteen plays that have made the stage and been published in over 100 hardcopy magazines, as well as a metric bunch of web page zines. Bill lives with his bride of twenty-seven years and their three children.