On February Seventeenth, Look Up To The Sky

On February Seventeenth, Look Up To The Sky

On the seventeenth of February there will be a change in the light.They are calling it an annular solar eclipse, the Ring of Fire. The Moon will pass in front of the Sun, not large enough to cover it completely. There will be no full darkness. Just a bright circle left burning in the sky. I will stand in the field at the edge of town when it begins.

The grass will be damp under my boots and a few neighbours will drift over, pretending we are only out for fresh air. We will nod to one another. We will not say much. Some moments do not need conversation.

The light will begin to thin.

It will not be sudden. It will feel as though someone is gently turning the world down. Shadows will sharpen along the hedges. The colours of houses and cars will lose their warmth. Even the birds will grow quieter, as if they sense something shifting above them. I will lift the eclipse glasses to my eyes.

At first there will be only a small dark curve pressing into the Sun. It will look almost unreal, like a mark left by accident. Then the curve will grow. The Sun will become a crescent. The air will cool, and I will pull my coat tighter without thinking. People will stop talking.

The Moon will move steadily, unhurried, as it always does. The light will turn strange, silver and thin. The afternoon will no longer feel like afternoon. It will feel borrowed.

Somewhere a car engine will cut out. A dog will bark and then fall silent. The sheep in the far field will lift their heads and stand still. Then the moment will arrive.

The Moon will settle into place and the Sun will become a ring. A bright circle of fire will hang above us, sharp and clear. Not soft, not gentle. A clean burning edge against a dark centre. We will not see full night, only that fierce halo suspended in the sky.

Someone will whisper something under their breath. Someone else will say nothing at all.For those few minutes the world will seem held in place.

No errands will matter. No unfinished conversations. No small daily worries. We will stand together, faces tilted upward, feeling small and somehow steady at the same time. I will feel the cold more clearly then. The way it brushes the back of my neck. The way the air feels thinner. And then, slowly, the edge will begin to change.

The ring will thin on one side. A brighter flare will appear as the Moon moves on. The circle will break and become a crescent once more. Light will return in layers.

Colour will seep back into the fields. The silver tone will fade. Engines will start again. Voices will rise, careful at first, then louder as people try to explain what they have just seen. The warmth will touch my face again, familiar and ordinary. The Sun will look whole.

Above us the Moon will continue on its quiet path, as it always does. The sky will settle back into itself, as if nothing remarkable has happened at all. Yet we will know it did. On the seventeenth of February there will be a ring of fire in the sky. And for a few minutes, we will all remember to look up.

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