These are the last moments of an afternoon. It looks more unusual than a sunset, as if it may be a portal to another time or a path to the heaven I was taught existed.
I was on a walk around my neighborhood when I reached the corner and came upon this, a Brooklyn version of Manhattanhenge. The light hurt my eyes, and I had to look away. But then I put the phone up, and it was better. I snapped the picture.
Right before this, I had been trying to think of a particular William Butler Yeats poem. A penny, brown penny. This is not unusual. I’m always trying to think of something somebody wrote because a phrase came to mind, or a half-phrase, or a couple of words.
Later, I looked it up. Yeats, penny. It is “The Young Man’s Song,” and this is how it ends:
“For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away,
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.”
This poem mentions the moon, and has nothing to do with the sunset, but that’s okay. It’s just the way things work sometimes.