Grand Spectacles

“Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.”― Thomas de Quincey

The Sun by Mary Oliver

“Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any
language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?”

Between sunrise and sunset
May peace, joy, delight visit
Be interrupted, delayed, held up
For a long conversation
Beauty abound
Do not pass it by.