The Cruise of Your Sun

To say goodbye to good old Sol as he
Slips west beyond the trees and sails away
Is not an errant childhood sentiment,
For his appointed tasks are dutiful

Pacing the planet like a sailor on watch,
Seeing to the safety of every space.
His battle-lantern can be seen aloft
From California to those lonely isles

Where pirates’ bones lie mouldering on the beach,
And then to far Nippon and old Cathay
To watch obscure philosophers brush verse.
A course steered west above the Hindu Kush

He notes that India is still in place.
The solar voyage continues at best speed
Above the desolate plain where now-ruined Troy
Once stood defiantly against the Greeks

For the allure of glory transient.
A meander above the Meander
Soon leads to noble, marbled Italy
Where art and wine and Latium’s dark-eyed arts

Beguile the world with visions of the eternal.
The Mediterranean beneath his keel,
Sol courses the Pillars of Hercules
And singing, soars above the Atlantic

The cold, austere Atlantic, deep blue tomb
Of shadowy civilizations ancient
Before Atlantis was born, when the Nile
Flowed as a shaded brook ‘neath forests green

The sun soars west, to where he’s happiest,
And that is wherever you happen to be;
And when at dawn he sails back home again,
He brings you a present - light from a star.