|
Sunset. The sky,
trying to see me, shades its eye
with the earth.
As sun drops partly beneath the horizon, the glare
is softened to clarity, the earth acting as a hand to
block the sun.
I could never afford
to buy a sunset like that;
I'm just looking.
December sunset,
tangible feathers of cloud
sweep the sky.
Something magical to me about the way both sound
and meaning of "tangible" here suggests the
barbed and seamed texture of feathers.
Fall sunset -
grains of sand cast long shadows
on the sidewalk.
Walking down Sunset,
stepping over stilted shadows
where pimps lean.
It's Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, where, at the
time I wrote this (1970s) a lot of pimps hung out. It's
also near sunset, making for long shadows of people
already long, as the pimps mostly were tall and gaunt
and wore high hairdos (often Afros) and hats on those,
plus high-heeled shoes or boots, so those shadows did
have a stilt-like quality.
Dregs of sunset -
a deep purple sulk
along the western rim.
The words are too loaded, too preachy for haiku
(dregs, deep purple sulk), but it'll do for a short
mood piece.
Clever beach puddles:
Their gold-red twinkle
long after sunset.
Dusk. Palms become
their silhouettes
in the burning sky.
Dusk. A bug flashes:
Still too light out, Firefly -
like explained magic.
It's dark enough to see the firefly light up, but
light enough to see the fly itself, not just its glowing
part, and light enough for the light to be pale, just
barely discernable, not the bright twinkle it becomes
in darkness. So seeing it this way is disillusioning,
as when a magic trick is explained.
Autumn dusk. A fugue -
each theme throws wheeling shadows
in the changing light.
This sounds good, but I'm not sure what I was looking
at when I wrote it. I think at the way, towards dusk
(especially late autumn dusk, with a clarity in the
air and an additional length to shadows from the sun's
declination [slant toward the north]) - at such a time,
the sun's tiniest motions in and out of clouds near
the horizon or simply lowering in a clear sky, makes
out-of-proportion commotion among shadows.
Dusk - I climb the hill,
putting the sun back
in the sky.
Easily done if the sun has just slipped behind the
hilltop.
Invisible,
a lone firefly slowly sets
in the western lawn.
Not visible because he's stopped lighting up. A
bit of a parody of the end of a western movie, "as
the sun slowly sets in the western sky." Apparently
(and you can see this at dusk), they light up to attract
mates, then sink towards the grass to join their prospective
mates.
"Snap!" From my thumbnail
into the waste basket sets
a white crescent moon.
The sun is up late.
We're crossing time zones--or does
the sun need winding?
Written during a car trip, heading west, which tends
to slow the sun's vanishment and prolong the dusk -
and the danger of being blinded by the setting sun.
Dark room where they've talked
since noon. I turn on the light--
bright startled faces.
So engrossed have they been in one another, so illuminated
by each other's smiles, that they don't realize it has
become dark or that hours have past until someone clicks
the lights on.
Dark November sky,
sunset a muted light
in a sick room.
Sun through a haze. I associate that look with a
room where the light is filtered through, for example,
steam from a steamer to help a child get over bronchio
infection.
Dusk, and I have not
yet written...what? Spring day,
what should I say?
Sunset clouds! –
mid-day clouds must wish
they could do that.
Do the white clouds of noon-day envy the color-splashed
sunset clouds? If you look closely at plain old woolbanks
in mid-day, they seem composed of zillions of tiny opalescent
rainbows.
Though nearly set,
the sun can still peek through leaves
and blind me.
Dusk - ahead a line
so straight it must be in my
mind. No - the ocean.
This was how it seemed to me one day, heading through
hills toward the Pacific coast, suddenly seeing ahead,
bridging the gap between two hills, a line so straight
I though I must be imagining it. It seemed too even,
too much like the roof-line of a long warehouse or other
man-made structure to be natural, but too extensive
to be man-made.
|
