My older daughter, the one who writes, works nights in Baltimore. She has collected quite a few sunsets.
Photos by Alice K.E. Chwazik
Not long after she shared these photos to social media, she posted this poem. I am sharing it here with her permission.
Is the world more beautiful
Because it's ending? Long hours I watch
The sun set over my small broken city,
My small home in this broken world,
And I think no, it could not be more beautiful.
I watch the sun when I should be working,
Earning what they call a living, breaking
All my bones one step at a time. The world
Is dying and we are killing it, and I am killing
Myself each day just so I might live. And I think -
Was the sky like this when the world was whole?
Orange and pink and ochre and cerulean?
The colors of mangos and papayas and chilis
And smoked salt? When we weren't burning it,
Not yet, but watching stars in their unrestrained
Profusion, nestled in tall grasses, holding hands
And wondering in awe. And was there a world,
Then, where I might rest, where every day
Weren't fashioned in fear, where I didn't hurt?
Could the sky have felt like this, in that other
Quiet place, without the fire and the pain?
Or is beauty made of these things, these sharp
And fractured things, which are lives toiling
To live under the sky they burn?
- - Alice Kathryn Elisabeth Chwazik
*****
I know this isn’t local, and it doesn’t fit at all within the boundaries of my blog. But I’m having the kind of day where words elude me and pictures of sunsets say more to me than a thousand news articles and press releases.
What do you think of when you see the sunset? When was the last time you were able to make the time to just stop and experience one?
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