we children of stardust

I
Ahh the wondrous stagecraft of the sky. The constant cycles within cycles within cycles of the heavens. All is motion. Cyclical motion.

II
At work a cry went up:
The clouds have parted you can see it !!
And we ran. How we ran ! How we ran in wonder. Gamboling lambs in springtime.
To look up. To gawp, as the heavens collide.
Heads up: speechless but for a whisper of a look at the partial Eclipse. Right at us in the place where we live. We stardust children feeling our origins beaming back at us.

III
I've experienced a Solar Eclipse before in Spain. I was out in the flat fields of the Vega Baja cycling. I was teaching afternoons and evenings, so the mornings were mine.
I'd dropped the children at school then headed out. My head was all over the place. The marriage was drying up and I needed to be out in the citrus orchards alongside the irrigation canals where the waters ran. Out in the spin of the cycle's wheels, muscle sore from trying to spin dry the rotten thoughts mouldering to decay.
I knew there was arid beauty around me in the fields. There were hoopoe, little owls, shrikes and purple heron but I was caught in the spin-cycles of the wheels. The forward motion. The wanting to outpace the phantoms of a collapsing marriage. And then ..
And then the sky dimmed to dusky blue. The temperature flipped to chill. The racket of bird noise muted. My skin prickled. La piel del gallina.
I stopped. Took my feet off the pedals, and stood there in the camino feeling the heavens suddenly dip down to where I was.
And I cried.
I cried for this sudden imposition of the heavens. The ineffable moment. My place in the Universe suddenly pinpointed and pinned down in the silence and dusk while the heavens waltzed around me. I suddenly knew exactly where I was and what was coming: my marriage was over.
Then the sun cleared the moon. The light reclaimed the land. Birds sang its testimony. I got back on my bike and headed home.

IV
I had a pupil with me when I saw the Eclipse today. A beautiful boy with ASD. He saw it too. Ran inside and drew what he saw. Drew a rocket to reach it. Then, dashing outside, held it to the sky. To show the heavens how we children of stardust can translate its beauty right back at it. How, in fleeting moments, we sense the Cycles outside and in that have our lives spinning in time.