Sunset; a sonnet

Sunset on Brant Lake in the Adirondacks. photo by Kevin Belmonte,

Occasionally some friends and I  challenge one another to write a poem inspired by a common starting point, a phrase, a form, an image. this weekend we were given this fine photograph of a sunset, taken by the writer Kevin Belmonte. Here’s what I came up with. As usual you can hear the poem by clicking on the title or on the ‘play’ button. As a bonus you can also click the link after my sonnet and read the sonnet Holly Ordway wrote in response to the same image!

Sunset

We’re looking west to where our setting sun
Already out of sight, looks back at us, to fling
His dying splendour to these clouds. They burn
With borrowed gold and crimson, not their own,
Like strips of silk torn from his royal robe,
These flags of hope left by our solar king,
Who sinks for us below the dark horizon
That he might yet encompass all this globe.

He leaves us with the promise of his rising
For all we face the west of his decline,
Already some where else are voices praising
As on the east they glimpse a kindled line.
His setting is a herald of the morn,
We watch the sunset, but we tread the dawn.

now read Holly Ordway’s take on the same image:

Light and Water