Sunrise Echo

By Diane Webster

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Below the horizon the sun

reaches up to touch the clouds

once gray now brilliant

orange and red sands

splashing against the sky.

Then calm, fading

back to gray as the sun

emerges from below

in a hemisphere orb

scaring darkness

into stretched shadows

longing to merge again.

But patience…

Beneath gathers,

extends over the ground

toward a coaxing moon;

the sun descends with red

scratches on jet contrails,

and orange-cloud pools

flow into the night ocean,

echo in abandoned shell.