Total Eclipse Poem by Erica Jong

Not wanting to write
for fear that anything-
the passion for the page,
the love of carbon ribbons & erasers-
will distract me from your face,
from your eyes green
as the flickering base of flames,
& your tarnished copper hair.

My love is thick as rust
& just as hard to scrape off.
It glows like the green roofs of paris:
it shines in the sun like dropped pennies.

I fix on your face
until I am blurred & bleared,
until my eyes cannot focus
& all words become one.

Oh let me write you into my life!
I am afraid of rust & tarnish,
but even more afraid of this gleam.

When my eyes have taken you in,
when my body has eaten
& spat you out,
when my heart remembers to beat
& my fingers remember the pen-

will I still remember you then,
boyish & sly-
yet a total eclipse of my sun?