Occultation

nklatt, "occultation over Foot Lake in Willmar, MN," 2009

“An occultation is an event that occurs when one object is hidden
by another object that passes between it and the observer.”
-Wikipedia

Celestial bodies often play a sort of sleight of hand,
leaving astronomers to look for the absence of a star,
a galaxy, as evidence of something unseen—a cloud
of cosmic dust, a dark twin orbiting a brighter sibling,
its transit only noticed when what’s missing returns.
But here, on this thin crumbling crust, isn’t occultation
an everyday occurrence? A man steps in front of me,
hiding a peacock from my sight. A small plane passes
low overhead, and in passing, reveals a fat full moon.
A memory of heartache casts old shadows that transit
between us, absenting us from one another until the
darkness passes, revealing that love had always been.