As sun was going down, I made a turn,
and suddenly beheld a sky so bold,
beside a burnished lake reflecting gold,
its colors so intense, it seemed to burn.
Believing it a blessing to behold,
I stopped, bewitched, and made a silent prayer
of gratitude, while skepticisms churn.
For this meets any masterpiece of old,
a priceless gem, as any judge discern.
Yet, here it was, a golden painted sky,
as dusk devoured remnants of the day.
A tinted lake and amber colored air
aloft, was spread in radiant display.
It caught the muse of grateful poet's eye.
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Author Notes
I photographed this lovely golden sunset at Lake Phalen in St. Paul, Minnesota, when my wife and I stopped and watched it set.
This poem is a Tuckerman Sonnet
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (February 4, 1821 - May 9, 1873) was an American poet, remembered mostly for his sonnet series. Tuckerman wrote sonnets with free abandon and with virtually no regard for any kind of pattern at all. His Sonnets burst from the gate in a flurry of rhyme, without any stanzas, then, after the first few lines, rhymes fall seemingly at random, as in his "Sonnets, First Series," which rhymes:
a b b a b c a b a d e c e d,with a volta at L10.
He was a reclusive comtemporary of Emily Dickenson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and acquaintance of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, but remained in relative obscurity, even with several published works.
This photograph was taken by the author himself on May 19, 2012.
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