The sunset of our lives

By Adam Gibson ©

"Moving west into the sunset

became the sunset of our lives"

that's a line

by Midnight Oil,

and I have carried it with me

for ready usage

upon the occasion of

every sunset I have ever seen

at every place I've ever been

around the world.

From Cadiz in southern Spain,

with Morocco across the straight,

burning in the haze,

from Trondheim, Norway,

the brief orange day,

declining from 12.08pm onward,

into the ice afternoon,

from a beach in Vanuatu,

upon which I fell on the news

of my dad's death,

unresolved still,

a pill in a glass of water

that just won't dissolve.

That line a little automatic pearl

triggered in my head and which

springs to my lips at

the sight of any sun

heading to any western horizon;

from the Abrohlos Motel in Geraldton,

Western Australia,

the silver ships out on the silver sea,

to the memory of us and me,

the 45 degree day in Alice Springs,

the rain-soaked glow west of

Hermansburg,

the antenna evenings of Bondi,

going cold in the westerly winds to

Emu Plains and the

houses of Shalvey and St Clair,

the graffiti train stations of Stanmore

and what's more,

the shadowed houses on stilts

under the escarpment of Bulli

and the shadowed streets of

Stanwell Park and Coledale,

these places from which I have dreamt

many different dreams,

all traced by the same line and the same song,

transcribing into a grand total

which I can call

the sunset of our lives.