“How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness”

Lisel Mueller, In Passing

On a summer night in 2015, on a cliff in San Diego, eight participants were invited to a performance. At the right time, they were checked into a red-roped area by a greeter, who showed them to the right seats after snipping their tickets. They were asked to turn their phones off, not take photos, and wait until the end to applaud, if they wished to do so.

The show would last forty-five minutes. They sat down.

The sun set.

They applauded. Refreshments were served after.

I know a little boy who cries at each sunset. “Summertime, time. Child, the living’s easy,” but I am a hypocrite; I am not little, but I also cry at sunsets. Loss of light, hope; after such a gorgeous explosion of reds and golds, oranges, ochres, sparkles, and coppers, such a standing-ovation-worthy performance, night falls too dark, too heavy, too thick and mean and opaque.

“Your daddy’s rich
and your ma is so good-looking, baby

Hush, baby,
No, don’t you cry,”

but the truth is, the sun is going, and no matter how hot it was; how rich the day and ice cream; how fast the half-chocolate-fudge-half-cookies-and-cream-with-sprinkles melted and dripped onto that t-shirt with a whale on the sky-blue breast pocket,

it will get chilly. All loneliness is. Some children know that already and cry at sunsets. “You know, one loves the sunset, when one is so sad…” said another little prince in 1942. So let us make the sunset last a little longer. He had found a solution:

“‘One day,’ you said to me, ‘I saw the sunset forty-four times!’

Were you so sad, then?’ I asked, ‘on the day of the forty-four sunsets?’”

But the little prince made no reply,”

and he did come from another planet, smaller than this one. And though one could, on Earth, in theory, fly very fast from Paris to Boston, L.A., Tokyo, Delhi, Moscow, Paris again… the logistics appear costly and cumbersome, unsustainable and anyway, in opposition to the stillness required by a sunset:

Oranges and reds and coppers, bronzes, golds,

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious.

There is a remote Alaskan village where, because of its position at the right intersection of latitude, longitude, and time zone, it is possible to see the sun set twice in one day… one some nights, some years. Perhaps one day we will go there, little one. Or you will go without me. “One of these mornings, you’re gonna spread your wings, child, and take, take to the sky.”

Until then, we will watch the sun set here, together, yes? And applaud at the end.