Eclipse by Alex Stolis

 

Image / cottonbro studio

Eclipse

         for Billie and Jim on their 70th anniversary

      

How many years make a love story?

How many years make a life?

How many wilderness adventures

with all their bruises, cut legs 

broken bones, mosquito bites 

make a marriage work?

Night brings with it a cold moon, 

cicadas crying, stars blossoming 

in a sullen sky 

scattered like so much broken glass;

it brings half-cooked dinners, 

a house filled with laughter.

Day brings the sun or clouds 

or smoky dew mornings with kids 

running late for school,

missed calls and mixed messages;  

and what remains the same 

through week after week

until the years accumulate 

into enough memories

to fill a new world

and the same sun circles 

and the same moon eclipses 

and pulls at the ocean 

and that same love; solid, firm

filled with grace, furnishes 

the framework for a universe. © Alex Stolis

Alex Stolis

Alex Stolis has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full-length collections, Pop. 1280 and John Berryman Died Here, were released by Cyberwit and are available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Ekphrastic Review, Louisiana Literature Review, Burningwood Literary Journal, and Star 82 Review. His chapbooks include Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife (released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024), RIP Winston Smith (released by Alien Buddha Press in 2024), and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres (released by Bottlecap Press in 2024). He lives in upstate New York with his partner, poet Catherine Arra. 

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