Bonita Cox Searle is a Hoosier native who strayed outside the border to the UK for a brief five years and returned with a slightly bewildered husband and a toddler with a British accent. She lives in Noblesville, Indiana, where she writes whenever she can’t bear not to. Her poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction has been published by Flying Island and the Polk Street Review.
The Eclipse of July 11, 1991
It lasted for six minutes and 11 seconds as
The moon moved from east to west
On that Indiana afternoon
Until it covered
Ninety percent of the sun.
Others made pinpricks in paper
Or peered through filtered telescopes to watch,
But I sat on the concrete steps that sloped
Down my front yard
With my back to the eclipse
And watched the compressed illumination
Of the sun that remained
Divide the shadows of our beloved old maple tree
And its leaves,
Our Chevy station wagon
With the faux wood panels,
Our Sears and Roebuck house,
Emma’s hand-me-down bike,
Julia’s scattered Barbies with the
Chopped off hair,
The remote control to David’s battered toy robot,
Carmel the cat who lolled
On the warm sidewalk,
And me.
The eclipse shadows and their radiant outlines
Melted into the daylight
Too soon
As the moon progressed past the sun,
A part of the rhythm of the universe
That I wanted to savor for just
One minute
More.
Passion Prosaic
The common wisdom is that passion dies
When it eats the poison fruit of day-to-day
And as we mourn, a friendship will arise
That comforts as young love does pass away.
Then friendship sees its mate with a clear eye
That wears no glasses with a rosy hue
And does not blink when hardships we defy
Or turn its head when fortune says adieu.
But friendship only feeds the heart, not skin
That cries with ardent hunger to be blessed
With touch exquisite as a violin,
Whose music rises to an untamed crest.
What gives me marriage long and with such bliss
Is that you still remember our first kiss.
Sweet and Sour Sonnet
Although you snore and grunt and fart
You've made a prisoner of my heart
Because
When you sleep you dream of me
And when you wake, you reach for me
And you never let me be
Untouchable
The Eclipse of July 11, 1991
It lasted for six minutes and 11 seconds as
The moon moved from east to west
On that Indiana afternoon
Until it covered
Ninety percent of the sun.
Others made pinpricks in paper
Or peered through filtered telescopes to watch,
But I sat on the concrete steps that sloped
Down my front yard
With my back to the eclipse
And watched the compressed illumination
Of the sun that remained
Divide the shadows of our beloved old maple tree
And its leaves,
Our Chevy station wagon
With the faux wood panels,
Our Sears and Roebuck house,
Emma’s hand-me-down bike,
Julia’s scattered Barbies with the
Chopped off hair,
The remote control to David’s battered toy robot,
Carmel the cat who lolled
On the warm sidewalk,
And me.
The eclipse shadows and their radiant outlines
Melted into the daylight
Too soon
As the moon progressed past the sun,
A part of the rhythm of the universe
That I wanted to savor for just
One minute
More.
Passion Prosaic
The common wisdom is that passion dies
When it eats the poison fruit of day-to-day
And as we mourn, a friendship will arise
That comforts as young love does pass away.
Then friendship sees its mate with a clear eye
That wears no glasses with a rosy hue
And does not blink when hardships we defy
Or turn its head when fortune says adieu.
But friendship only feeds the heart, not skin
That cries with ardent hunger to be blessed
With touch exquisite as a violin,
Whose music rises to an untamed crest.
What gives me marriage long and with such bliss
Is that you still remember our first kiss.
Sweet and Sour Sonnet
Although you snore and grunt and fart
You've made a prisoner of my heart
Because
When you sleep you dream of me
And when you wake, you reach for me
And you never let me be
Untouchable
Bonita Cox Searle
