Poets & Sunsets

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914-1953)
Welsh Poet and Writer

The sun set beautifully this evening over the Peach Bottom Mountains in a notch between Catherine's Knob and Betsy's Peak at 8:36 pm . It began its descent as a glowing ball of brilliant orange-red fury, the sort that grabs your attention and holds on until it's gone. Mid-course, the sun became a dim ghost of itself as thin clouds hanging over the New River tamed the fury with streaks of warm grays. Near the end, the fury returned, dropping out of the clouds in orange-red bursts, until the sun was in full rave once more. But, alas, every sunset must end and the ball soon touched the treetops and, in a few fleeting moments, was gone.

We can only hope that the sunset of our lives will be as beautiful.

Sunsets are my favorite part of the day. Yet, they are, as Forrest Gump's mother told him, like a box of chocolates: you never know what you are going to get. Be they as beautiful as this one or as ugly as bathtub gin, I cannot for the life of me figure them out a priori.

The Dylan Thomas poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” is another of my favorite things. He wrote it, of course, not about sunsets but as advice for his dying father. Yet he said more in these three lines of poetry and in his 39 years of living than I could ever hope for in three thousand lines of prose and in all my years -- now 60 and counting -- of trying.

Oh, to be a poet! They are the only ones who truly understand.