Sunstruck

I watched the sun “go down” last night, bright as a new copper coin. While I tossed and turned in fitful sleep, hot even with the air conditioner running, earth spun on Her axis, turning to Helios’ glare the Kansas wheat fields, the formidable and chilly Rockies, the Northwest forests.

While I dreamed strange dreams, the sun rose high over the Pacific islands, over the commuters of Tokyo, over China and the Gobi Desert of Mongolia.

Now I drive my familiar route to work, squinting through the heat and haze of an East Coast summer morning. Beyond my eastern shoulder, the sun has “returned” and rides high, a god indeed, crucial for life but deadly to mortal gaze. Europe is going to bed now and night is dark and deep over Australia and Arabia.

Ancients pondered the mystery of the sun’s journey, spun intricate tales to account for its drop into the west every night and rebirth in the east every morning.

Now science has the explanation: merely the spinning of the Earth-ball around a hot gas cloud. And we hardly pay any attention anymore.