So I was going through a bunch of stuff in my room (in slow preparation for the big move later this month) and came across a poem that my dear friend Thomas wrote like ten years ago. [Note: I don't feel old enough to say things like "ten years ago" about things or people that still feel recent or regular.] I'd forgotten all about it, to be honest, but I remember when I first read it, and how beautiful it was to me, then. It's interesting to find that one of your best friends, who is such a boy all the time, is simultaneously writing beautiful words. Did he share them with everyone? I don't remember. Some of the other boys were writing, then, too, but much more painfully, as I recall. They were writing to exorcise, whereas Thomas was writing to express, it seems. Anyway, I couldn't resist revisiting those memories and reprinting it, here:
The Sunset
Warm crimson sunlight shower of sunset
Cascading rain of light upon my head
It snares me like a tangled fishing net
The warming rays of light like weighted lead
As I gaze toward the vast orange, pink
It fills the sky, the very utmost height
Like molten liquid, down a kitchen sink
Like a huge runaway cloud-chasing kite
This site, being borne on the suns shoulders
Vanishing to waters of sapphire
The clouds glow, hanging, a sky of boulders
The water, land, sky, all lit afire
This enchanting place, a true paradise
Sunsets will come again, just to entice
Tom John Frank
The Sunset
Warm crimson sunlight shower of sunset
Cascading rain of light upon my head
It snares me like a tangled fishing net
The warming rays of light like weighted lead
As I gaze toward the vast orange, pink
It fills the sky, the very utmost height
Like molten liquid, down a kitchen sink
Like a huge runaway cloud-chasing kite
This site, being borne on the suns shoulders
Vanishing to waters of sapphire
The clouds glow, hanging, a sky of boulders
The water, land, sky, all lit afire
This enchanting place, a true paradise
Sunsets will come again, just to entice
Tom John Frank