the sun it rises, the sun it sets

Today, I am sick. Today, I am stressed. Today, I am a ball of emotions which fleet through my mind and heart a mile a minute.  And so when I got home today after a coffee-fueled afternoon of paper writing and apartment scrambling, I could have just gone to bed and taken a nap. But I thought: I haven’t been up to the roof to see the sun set in a while and I only have two weeks left, I should take advantage. And look what I would have missed had I not:

I climbed the rubble-filled, under-construction stairs and reached my family’s sixth-story roof, eyes widening and smiling as I looked out at the wispy, bright, magnificent sky.  I sat on the roof, reading poetry and letting the wind rush across my eyelids, and wrote: each day, the sun it rises, the sun it sets.

It was the first time I had considered the centrality of the sun to my Senegal experience, how many cherished memories entail its rising and setting, how its warmth and beauty have guided my days and accompanied many a conversation and reflection time, many a unifying, joyful, and thoughtful moment, much laughter, some tears, humbling gratitude.

Some of these moments and memories I have captured in photos, some are wrapped into a Mary Oliver favorite, some were just simple moments with the sun, some will stay with me always.

The Sun by Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed—
or have you too
turned from this world—

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

Each day, the sun it rises, the sun it sets.