A magnitude of difference
between true totality
and ninety-eight percent.

Even so, and for only ninety-three,
we rushed out after rounds
and off the floors

and gathered on the roof
in scrubs and scrub caps
or business casual

sharing cheap glasses
and cardboard viewers
and temporarily forgetting

the code just moments earlier—
occluded vessels, and an open chest.
I didn’t hear them call it,

had stared from the corridor
at the vacant face, unsure,
but only briefly.

Some artist said art is an action
against, a denial of death.
Exquisite contrast here:

a light goes out permanently–
no fractions, shades, or nuance.
Minutes before totality

our shadows turned sinuous,
like warped x-rays,
long and lithe and wrong.

Filtered through the trees,
a thousand shadow-crescents,
cast by the pinhole spaces

between the leaves,
too small to see directly.
Even seven percent of sun

was bright as day—
someone from HR said
it felt just a bit colder.

Only through dark glasses,
or projected onto the far side
of a box, was the eclipse

discernable. Nothing ever stopped
moving: the earth, the moon, the sun—
only an alignment of orbits,

perfect somewhere else,
but nearly perfect here,
which is sometimes enough.