2016/01/07

Descent of the Daystar


He's up there, high up, and I frown as I re-consult my sunset tables.
All right, it is nigh; the final sweep always the swiftest, I remind myself.
I perceive with amusement the masculine pronoun that has travelled from Coleridge into my mental notes.
Was some Ra-like one in the back of the mariner's head, or did he only contrive a convenient rime for "sea"?
Lo, the hasty farewell has begun, the headlong plunge to the horizon, like a -- the azures are crimsoning -- like a marathon athlete who's saved the coal in her muscles for the end sprint.
I dig my fingers deep in the sand and watch.
Something's very wrong about these settings and risings, I say to myself, like the old streetside trick with the magician vanishing the coin and retrieving it from behind your ear. 
I can more eagerly digest the Norwegian fireball that swirls about my head than the African version that swings from scalp to sole and back.  
The blazing rim is but a whisker's breadth from the steel-blue parapet of ocean. 
I lean forward, almost hoping to hear a clang.
The doughnut is poised to dunk.
No, the coffee is poised to rise -- the sun ain't setting; 'tis the earth rushing up to draw a curtain over it,
And as I balance this astronomical technicality in my brain, my eyes wander, and I miss my moment:
The sea has already taken a bite out of him.
And that initiates the ebbing of light; the grays begin to surround me, deepening in sudden jerks as the planet's eyelids droop.

"Isn't it a lovely sunset, Mr Robert Frost?" remarked a young lady at the balcony of a party, to which replied he, "I never discuss business after dinner."

I roll the anecdote across the draft for a groove to slide it in, stopping only to witness the shiny bald top of the glorious thing slip quietly into the waves.

I become aware I'd been holding my breath, which I unclasp as I prepare to disembark the dune.
On the climb down I turn to the wispy clouds and warn them, Soon, out of your sight, too.
As far as I can tell the universe is now a whimsical gallery of purple and orange, the silhoutte of my sedan somewhere in it -- a bridge to the world of dinner, detergent and bed.
I trudge my reluctant way thither, which is when I'm struck by the happy thought that the photonic sun has set; the neutrinous knows no nightfall.

-------

Update on Sep 2022:
I only just came to know of John Updike's Cosmic Gall that expands on the last line.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I love the tag "meta poetry"

The setting is made splendid by your description. I am not sure Robert frost would've put it like that.

one of your more understandable prose aka poetry in the recent times.