STEVEN RAY SMITH

A total eclipse of the sun


requires us to consider that a power 

that’s never left us

might


although we know it’s just

a two minute, forty second

night.




a two minute forty second night (FutureCycle Press, 2022), is a book-length prayer exploring a common human question: what does it mean, and feel like, to live in a world of uncertainty while remaining hopeful of a redemptive future?  The short poems flow from an initial awareness of temporality, to a desire to fight back against a lack of control, to acceptance of life through action, to a final meditative state of being and moving forward in a precarious world.