I would like to thank Discovery Institute and especially the Dallas office for a successful solar eclipse experience last weekend. Monday in Waxahachie started grey and misty. The forecast for the time of totality was still uncertain. But, by mid-morning there were glimmers of hope as I noticed the occasional small patch of blue sky peeking through. By the time of first contact (the start of the partial phase), breaks in the clouds were becoming more frequent, and we could catch glimpses of the eclipsed sun.

The sky cleared almost completely from horizon to horizon shortly before totality began! We enjoyed almost four-and-a-half minutes of glorious totality.

About an hour before totality, I read aloud this poem I wrote for the occasion:

Totality: A Celestial Theater

The sky’s great expanse, a cosmic sea,
Where two orbs of primordial decree,
Sail on, their fated meeting seldom seen,
A dance of day and night, a rare convene.

Behold Sol! A king of gilded throne,
Whose fiery rays to farthest lands are known.
He reigns on high, a tireless blazing orb of gold,
Whose light brings life, whose absence makes us cold.

Fair Luna, silver sovereign of the night,
Her changing face transforms the dark with light.
She waxes, wanes, in rhythmic, endless beat,
Her phases mark the flow of time’s retreat.

Yet whispered omens fill the trembling air,
A spectacle that this odd couple share.
When orbits intersect in cosmic dance,
Their transient union, a celestial trance.

A specter made of shadow, swift and strange,
Devours the day, the world to rearrange.
Unnatural night descends in eerie hush,
As Sun’s fair face fades to a ghostly blush.

Behold! A ring of light, the Corona’s crown,
Ethereal halo ’round the Moon’s dark gown.
In skies so vast, our earthly woes seem small,
The mind enchanted, heart and soul in thrall.

These fleeting moments stretch, an endless sigh,
The march of time slowed to a lullaby.
The senses reel, the mind can scarce conceive,
Of wonders that the eyes cannot believe.

The land is swaddled in unnatural night,
Platinum grasses gleam in eerie light.
The sky, a deep and wrong shade of indigo,
Renders our minds useless, what do we know?

Senses bombarded by the sudden change,
Emotions, too, run wild and range,
From awe to terror, wonder to fright,
The swift transition from day to night.

How can we comprehend this vast event,
In mere moments, before it’s come and went?
The memory already starts to fade,
As if the whole spectacle were a charade.

The mind reels in deep space, the heart screeches mute,
Faced with this clockwork universe, so brute.
Loose spheres flung at stupefying speed —
How do they not crash, not veer like a steed?

Not day, not night, yet not quite twilight,
We see, yet not see, by the corona’s light.
Blinded by darkness, yet illumined within,
A glimpse of truth, amidst the shadows’ din.

We stand on darkened plains, alive but numb,
Transported to this strange delirium.
A black disk has covered reality’s display,
Revealing the abyss in which we play.

The moon obscures, yet reveals so much more,
As if the sun’s true face we now explore.
In losing sight, we gain a deeper view,
Of cosmos vast and our existence too.

In this grand act, Einstein’s theory does not falter,
As light doth bend, and spacetime fabric does alter.
A cosmic test, where gravity’s own might,
Reveals itself as day succumbs to night.

For scientists, treasure troves unfold,
Of data new and theories yet untold.
The solar winds, the flares, the mysteries,
Each eclipse adds a page to histories.

The land grows light again, as shadows fade,
The Sun emerges, glorious, unafraid.
We blink and stretch, as from a dream we wake,
To ponder what is real, and what’s mistake.

Yet something in the soul is shaken, stirred,
A whisper of infinity, half-heard.
Both awed and humbled by what we have seen,
The cosmic dance, eternal and serene.

Until next time the planets shift and spin,
And night and day embrace like long-lost kin,
We walk in wonder, yearning to discern,
The Truth behind the Veil, for which we burn.

I was encouraged by one of the attendees to publish this. So, here it is.