Glimpses of Ecstasy Over the Pacific

A strange light descended on us tonight.
The concrete promenade
became the path to a pink secret

The harbour rainbow was the contour
of some extravagant design
we couldn’t grasp

The sea-rocks turned towards the moon
like silver-foil reflection
of a world that could be ours

if only we believed in it.
And that is the problem:
believing is more than seeing

I kept walking and watching
the miracle shrink behind the hills,
which is the way of all sunsets

but this one was different,
this one felt as if
the last of something would be gone

Some stopped and watched
to keep it longer, while others were afraid
of endings, and kept their backs to it -

the man in shorts and pulled-up socks,
for instance, his legs the arch
where middle age slumps into old

And suddenly, like him, I was removed
from my best life, here at the centre
of some old, awful truth, and I walked

behind the moving sky
in a stupor of transience,
in a slow motion of fear

unsure how much time
remained to me, and how to measure it
In perfect evenings? Outbreaks of sky? Hope, beauty?

Oceans from a plane?
Years unfolding like maps?
I ran to catch it, I needed to know

Then it was gone behind the hill.
Left in semi-darkness, we continued
our crab-like scuttle to the dawn