This week’s poem, by Kate Kearns, harkens back to the full solar eclipse that so dazzled and moved many Mainers around this time two years ago. I love this poem’s nuanced subjective description of the moment of totality, and the quiet but profound transformation that holds as the sun returns. 

Kearns is the author of “You Are Ruining My Loneliness” (Littoral Books, 2023). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Appalachian Review, The Swannanoa Review, Common Ground Review, Sugar House Review and elsewhere. Kate was a finalist for the 2024 Charles Simic Memorial Prize and the 2024 Maine Postmark Competition.
 

Path of Totality

April 8, 2024

We look up and Apollo’s fiery eye
looks back astonished, terrible.
I’d expected greying into slate, a true
inversion, but no, there’s the golden

line fading up to midnight blue.
There’s Venus caught in her day dress.
I ask without speaking, Must I
change my life? and feel earth cold

on my back, the pines around the lake
sharp, black interludes. Have the birds
stopped, or do I want them to? The corona

flashes loose at its edge then wheels
to crescent, which slowly returns
the same sun as before, only brighter.

– Kate Kearns

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Path of Totality,” ©2024 by Kate Kearns, was first published in Appalachian Review (2025). It appears by permission of the author.