In Columbus, observers saw a partial solar eclipse that lasted for two hours and 48 minutes, beginning at 1:04 pm, with maximum coverage at 2:30 pm, and ending at 3:52 pm.
The seventh hour is 1 pm, if one begins to count the hours of the day at sunrise, or approximately at what is six o'clock in the morning.
Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I'm only falling apart;
And there's nothing I can say, a total eclipse of the heart.
Turn around, bright eyes. - Song, Bonnie Tyler
It is early morning, that strange time when the air tastes wet and the sky is starting to lift second by second from the darkness. The light is flat and muffled, colors indistinct. I anxiously wait for the sun to break through.
At mid-morning, I see it - a faint golden glow appearing on the horizon. The light is streaming down between puffy clouds. It feels like theater to me, and the stage is stunning. A beautiful day, I whisper to the wind.
The sun has lit the leaves of the crab apple tree in the front garden. A snatch of sky peaks through, a mosaic in blue and green that shifts gently with the breeze. I stare into it, allowing my focus to soften. There is nothing unusual in the scene.
But something phenomenal is about to happen. Together, the sun and moon will occupy the sky on the seventh hour, I say softly, looking around warily.
I check the time. It's now well past noon. Already the day is hot and humid. I shield my eyes and cast a long glance upward. The gleam making a slit of bright color on the deck makes me blink. I know the sun will continue to rise huge and heavy overhead, a burning, shimmering sphere that will later pour its heat, but for now it's holding in its breath only the premonition of what will come.
At 1 p.m., the moon, passing across, begins to shut off the beams of the sun. I run to the back window and peer out into the sky. Across the yard I can see a ghostly cloud above the housetops blotting out the sun. It's not quite black outside, just disagreeably gray. I press my lips together in concern. Zeus, father of the Olympic gods, is turning midday into shadows.
As darkness passes in the same way all over the world, I try to appreciate the nuances of color but try as I may, I can only see a lackluster palette of dreariness. It is as if an evil mist is hovering over to eclipse the heart.
Turn around, bright eyes, I tell myself, waving a finger in an arc like a magician performing a trick. The sun has to be up there somewhere in all that murk.
After some space of time, almost on the tenth hour, the sun gradually unveils itself. A dramatic slash at the horizon shows a delicate pink beyond, as though there is a world with its own sun on the reverse side of the cloud. Then radiance bursts from behind a westering cloud bank, dazzling with unexpected brightness.
Never in my life before has sunshine looked so good.
No longer falling apart, my heart sings as the light returns.
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