Our science teachers told us to find and bring
old rolls of undeveloped film— then showed us
how to pull the strips out. They made a somehow
satisfyingly crisp sound as they cleared
the revolving sprockets. Each of us snipped
two squares from the reel, which we separated
with scissors and taped to cardboard windows
we then could hold before our eyes to shield them.
We’d go into the playground to witness how
the moon slid into position directly between
the earth and the sun. We were warned: the sky
would go dark even in broad daylight. The dogs
would howl, the roosters in their cages crow
in confusion. We were not to look directly
at the sun, or its concentrated rays could damage
our eyes. Another teacher said, if we filled a pail
or basin with water and set it on the ground,
we could look into it as into a mirror to see
this heavenly passage that would not come again
for maybe fifty years, or a hundred. We learned
the names for those cone-shaped shadows and the one
that superimposes its dark body upon an aura edged
with light: how it’s darkest at the center
where the source of light is completely occluded,
how the area released in passage shades off into
an almost or nearly dark. How in the old days,
the people beat their drums and gongs in a frenzy,
believing the god of light had been eaten by a beast.