Tag: sunset

Poetry by Patrick Jennings
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Expansive Sunset, Lobster Cove Head, Gros Morne Nnational Park, Newfoundland, Canada

The Enormity of a Sunset

Nothing reminds me
Of just how small a speck I am
In this universe
Than being in an expansive landscape
At golden hour

I sit with that
Groove on my insignificance
Feel community
With all the other insignificant things
I share existence with

The rock I’m sitting on
The trees and shrubs around me
The wildflower eking out a life
In a crack of the craggy cliff face
Each ephemeral wave breaking on the shore

We’re all here
For the briefest glimmer of time
Even the half billion year-old rock
I’m sitting on
The tiniest things in the tiniest time

Because what is any one thing
No matter how large
Or how old
When measured against
The infinite eternal

But here I am
For the briefest slice of a moment
In this miniscule scene
Of a star setting over a planet’s horizon
Feeling connected to all of it

And for that moment
I am not just a part of it all
But filled with it all
Expanding until I am as vast and timeless
As the universe

.
.
.
.
.

Then the sun sets
I go back to the car
And tow my little trailer
To some nice little spot
To camp for the night

Apparently
Even enormity
Is ephemeral
But the memory of it
Lasts a lifetime

Continue reading The Enormity of a Sunset

Landscape by Patrick Jennings
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Dinner Hour Golden Hour, Mutton Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada

Lingering Too/II

9:00AM, Mutton Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada

I think the last sunset I saw on a horizon not entirely occluded by clouds (or under assault by squadrons of mosquitoes), was in St. John, a couple of weeks ago. Here, in Mutton Cove, Nova Scotia, it was a luxury to photograph the sunset, then sit outside comfortably for a meal. Even better, and for the first time on this trip, I sat outside to compose a blog post (yesterday’s  Serpentine). 

This morning, the day broke cloudy, but the sun soon made its appearance through scattered broken clouds, while a light onshore breeze has kept all the biting insects at bay. So after some breakfast and conversation with Vincent, who shared the parking lot with me last night, I find myself lingering, just a little longer than I’d intended, to enjoy the peace of the morning and watch some locals launch their small boat into the bay as the tide comes.

The tide rises so quickly here at this far end of Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy, (I’m watching it inch its way up the beach, little steps with every wavelet) you don’t bother backing the boat all the way into the water. Rather, just gently lower it onto the shore ahead of the advancing sea. You’ll have about enough time to bring your tow rig and trailer back above the tide, then walk back to the boat and clamber in before the ocean rises enough to lift you off the bottom.

They’ve paddled a little further offshore, to deeper water, and started their engine. Now heading off to some hopefully lucky fishing spot in the bay. And I think, too, I’ve lingered long enough. Pack up and off to Halifax. Perhaps a cycle along the way.

Continue reading Lingering Too/II

Poetry by Patrick Jennings
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Falling Away to Depth, Valley of the Gods, Cedar Mesa, Moki Dugway, State Road 21, Utah, United States of America

Falling Away to Depth

The mesa falls away
Into the depths of early evening
Low sun illuminates
Undulating canyons and buttes

Sedimented sandstone
Layers indicating a scale
Powerfully daunting
And exquisite

And I
Stopped halfway between
Floor and ceiling
Sense myself in the centre of aeons

Epochs pass
Every hundred steps or so
Up the trail

A hundred years
A thousand
A hundred thousand
A million

Unwinding time
As species come
And species go

Great, fearsome lizards
Ruled the known universe
For 165 million years

But only in the last tens of steps
Before the top
Do I walk in the footsteps
Of my most ancient ancestors
A paltry 6 or so million years ago

I am reminded
For all our accomplishments and cleverness
We are but toddlers on this Earth
Itself nothing more
Than a pale blue dot
Circling a minor star
Spiraling in an outer arm
Of one galaxy
In a universe dotted
With hundreds of billions

Layer upon layer
Of time and space
Stretch out to scales
Unimaginable

A few steps more
I stand atop the mesa
Returned to the time and place
That belongs to me now

Deep, heavy breaths
To gain my equilibrium
While scanning across the vista
Tallying a few hundred million years of strata

A snippet
In an existence billions of years in the making
Layer upon layer of time and space
To make this collection of sediments
Which seems so very vast and ancient
But is no more than a cosmic blip
In all that was
All that is
And all that will be

I feel small
Fleeting
Insignificant

Yet

Somehow

And nonetheless

Stupendously magnificent

Because in all this immensity
Stands me
A self-aware collection of molecules
Contemplating the inconceivable miracle
That is my own consciousness
Tucked away in some small backwater
Of eternal infinity

Just how fucking exquisite is that?

And the view up here is awesome.

The sun sets
Light falls away to darkness
But for the little beacon of light
That is me

Continue reading Falling Away to Depth