for Beau Cutts and Michael G. Smith

I admit I did not witness it myself,
this momentous celestial event:
the great rare transiting

within our place in this galaxy.
Protect our eyes at all costs
websites around sister-planet Earth

direly warned. Beware at every link,
and the binocs-and-paper contraption
recommended did not properly function.

I opted not to destroy my retinas.
But I know with astronomical certainty,
for once in a hundred-five years,

once in fifty-two-ish blue moons,
She indeed rode her enchanted orbit,
flaunting Her diminutive perfect beauty

like Marilyn Monroe’s beauty mark
on the face of God the Sun.
Call him Helios,

Call him Old Sol.
Call him the Hollywood-styled Sol
in our only Solar System.

He was indeed known to be on his knees
for seven reverent hours,
prostrate before the goddess of love

as She unlocked a deep secret
of our home Universe. Even sight-unseen,
it is to be believed: She reigns, in beauty.

Karla Linn Merrifield, a National Park Poet-in-Residence and now a frequent contributor to The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, has had 800+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies, she has 14 books to her credit. Following her 2018 book-length poem 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the new Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press.