Sunset #734 the fire dies down, and the colors rise up rivers flow amber, gold, and blood-rose cascading one upon the other wave upon wave around the sky pushing back the eastern dark holding the light for one last hour giving us time, time to remember all of the days we have had together the glorious days beneath the sun
The main character in my recent book, All That Was Asked, is a poet. It’s a first-person narrative, and he keeps mentioning how people reacted to a poem, or how much he enjoyed writing a poem, or that he likes to watch sunsets because they inspire poetry. But . . . there aren’t any poems in the book itself. It seemed to me I couldn’t quite measure up to the standard implied in the text . . . one gets the impression, although Ansegwe is self-effacing about it, that he’s actually rather good.
Still . . . it’s nagged at me, that I didn’t have any poems by Varayla Ansegwe. After spending hours and days and weeks and months with him, I’m sort of a fan, if you will. If I were a real fan, I’d have his work, wouldn’t I?
So I gave it a try. It’s interesting, to try to write personal-style poetry from someone else’s perspective. The one above results from all those mentions of poetry related to watching sunsets. Imagine our hero trotting down the hill after enjoying a really nice day’s-ending light show, muttering to himself, wriggling his fingers, anxious to scribble down this latest idea. We can leave it to your imagination how he improved this “draft”.
For a second poem, I tried to combine two things from his background. First, it seems Ansegwe had a fairly decent collegiate-level ranking in, well, whatever ball game is popular in Korlo. I envision it as sort of like baseball, maybe like an upsized version of kickball, with a larger, rugby-sized ball. Lots of running, jumping, catching, throwing–very energetic. Second, it’s evident that he was quite the one for romantic entanglements.
If I can gather enough of these, I’ll put together a little “collection” that I can share at events and such. Oh, and as a reminder . . . consider these as translated from Korlovian.
(Photos are mine. All from our own universe, alas.)
Intercept In this moment, there is only the ball, gliding on its parabolic arc. It requires all of your mind to calculate the leap the extension of your arm, the stretch of your fingers the breath you draw at its approach the strength you need to hurl it to your comrades. For this moment, you do not know that she is gone. For this moment, your heart is no more than a muscle. Whether the ball glides into your hand whether it skims your fingertips and caroms off under the lights either way, you will crash to earth again the world's gravity will bear you down the moment will end and you will know. But in this moment, you leap and time stretches to meet you.
