Primarium Opus*

Primarium Opus

 

Some Lines Conceived While

Viewing Sunset from a Ferry Boat

That Moved Slowly Down River

 

-U-

 

To behold the aureate spectacle of sunset

Is to acknowledge the primary work of the artist,

 

The one outside and within, that expects us

To comprehend complex existential truths

 

Via the interplay of

Light, form, and color -

 

We sense that this is so because we vaguely recall

The hopes we shared on the day of our creation

 

Consider that Eternity

Is forever before and after

Every zeptosecond of measurable time:

 

That we occupy a momentary space

Between the immeasurable before us

And the immeasurable after us

 

It is beyond the ken of our reasoning

 

But we are not so much overwhelmed

With wonder about the enigma of time,

 

But with wonder about the mystery of us

 

We conclude that we are Everything

Because our reality is all that we know

 

 

We are the shadow maker

And the puppet impaled on a pole �"

Mere players that have never seen the sun,

But claim to know of it and play to an audience

 

Comprised only of us - or God

 

Yet, we would know more of the sun

And create others who claim to have seen it

 

And emphatically say so �"

Not just to us, but to all those

 

We have fashioned

To marvel as we do 

 

And thus, our every experience of sunset

Is tinged by a sense of primordial sadness,

 

Particularly those viewings when we are alone

 

We may live in the moment, but we are mindful

Of what it may be like when the gloaming is no more,

And we are left to contemplate the hopes that were dashed

 

 We are the proverbial “foreigners in a foreign land,”

And we are every moment homesick for a place

We remember only in our longing at sunset.