Sunrise 11/15/23

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Sunrise

Photo by Jonathan Potter ⓒ 2023

With apologies to Wallace Stevens

I
There is no sun,
There is no rise.
There is only the poet, watching.

II
When I arrived at the river
There were only these three geese
Secreting three sunrises.

III
The sunrise shattered like stained glass.  
It was a slow-motion moment soon past.   

IV
The river and the mountains
Are one.
The river and the mountains and the sunrise
Are one.  

V
I am guilty of 
Counting syllables 
When confronted with the sun
About to rise or having
Risen as I stand
There in the silence.   

VI
As winter comes on,
The sun rises further and further
Away on the despondent horizon.
The poet's entrepôt of words
Grows fogbound
With the temptation of silence.

VII
O sleeping people of Umatilla,
Why do you suppose the sunset
Will suffice for beauty?
The Columbia flows east for 
Only a short while
Before it turns to bring you the sunrise.   

VIII
I have been to London,
Paris, Vienna, Edinburgh, Galveston,
New Orleans, Montreal, and Seattle,
And have seen the same sunrise,
Or seemingly the same,
As in these channeled scablands.

IX
When the sun began to rise,   
It made the horizon   
One of many horizons.   

X
At the sight of the sunrise   
Splurged as if from the cannula of a mad painter,   
Even the stags of scarcity   
Would pause and look up.   

XI
She stood at the kitchen window
And stared out at the November gloom,
Fearing for a moment that
The headlights on the highway
Were the remnants of last year's sunrises.   

XII
The moon is setting.   
The sun must be rising.   

XIII
It was sunset all afternoon.   
It was raining   
And it was going to rain.   
The sunrise remained
In the poet's limbs.