Painting by Elaine Brown Folgar
Partial Eclipse
Walking, looking down, she saw the sky
make shadows on the ground. They showed
the quarter-bitten sun, which caught her eye
and made her stop. A dozen crescents glowedon the pavement, unarrayed and dispersed
in the nebula of undefined leaves.
She dug her phone out of her backpack-purse
to capture it. Sometimes what one perceivesis augmented by memory, or by
expectation: some future lazy day,
scrolling through her pictures, she'll wonder why
she took a shot of shadows on the grayconcrete of a sidewalk—was that along
the bike path on the way to work?—and when
she does, will she recall the way the sun
and moon made shapes she'll never see again?
