the green notebook :
, fragments of a work-in-progress
All the poets are writing eclipse poems, it seems. I am not, caught up with other things, despite our position nearly in the path of totality. I didn’t even manage to compose a birthday poem this year, my first year missed in some twenty or so. I am still stretching and carving this sequence for Barry McKinnon. I am sketching reviews. I am carving short stories. Remember that report a while back that suggested the earth’s moon may be older than we’d previously thought? So many of the poets circled that fact as well. As jwcurry chastised me circa 2001: not every occasion requires capture.
Monty Reid posts an image of his poem from the prior eclipse to social media. “Watching the Eclipse,” from These Lawns (1990), a post he captions as composed after both the event and his mother’s first heart attack. “I had expected more darkness,” the poem begins, “something abrupt.” This was the first collection of Monty’s I picked up, gathered from the dusty overflow of Red River Books during one of my first trips through Winnipeg, either 1997 or 1998. This book was my favourite of his for the longest time, until I got my hands on Flat side (1998): the way his long lines manage such distances across such short space. It was as though the reach of Andrew Suknaski but a compactness to contain it. My copy of These Lawns is signed “spring ‘99,” so I must have carried it with me to get signed upon meeting him, April 1, 1999, when we read together for an event at the Rideau Street Chapters, hosted by The League of Canadian Poets. As I found out, this was the day after he’d moved from Drumheller, Alberta to Luskville, Quebec, for the sake of a new job at the Museum of Nature. From Badlands Alberta to badlands Quebec.
The previous eclipse, recalling that day of grade three the whole school sitting in the gymnasium attempting to catch anything from the rolled-in television screen. This is how we were kept away from windows, the small sequence of school gymnasium thick square glass at the top of the wall, letting in the shade of the moon but no danger of direct light. Or, as Monty’s 1979 eclipse poem ends: “The sparrows / gather again in the bushes in the courtyard / and there are limitations in the world.”
*
As we drove an hour and a bit east, turning south, landing at the ruins of St. Raphael’s Church near Williamstown, to catch the direct view of the solar eclipse. Ottawa was near enough the path of totality, but instead we drove into it, visiting my parents and grandparents at the cemetery in Maxville en route. Our young ladies requested we stop. At Glen Roy Road in Glengarry County, turning into the church ruins said to be the oldest in North America, the melted bell from the 1970 fire that took the roof, the insides. Only the stone structure remains.
The path of totality, and grey outline of flame surrounding oculus of black upon black, during those two minutes it was safe to glimpse with the naked eye. The small crowd a hush.
