Six Minutes

I keep thinking I'll get "the" sunset photo, so I took off again tonight, shortly after 8:00. The sky was beautiful, the sun was slipping down the sky, and I was idle.

Under 10 minutes passed between deciding to go and actually taking the pictures. For six minutes, I stood at the side of the road, camera clicking, filters and lenses on and off and on again, through forty pictures. In six minutes, the sun went from a fat, fluid, blinding orange in a pink sky to a wisp of pink in the dusky blue-hour sky, and then it was gone.

Six minutes.

In my non-science brain, sunsets amaze me. The sun goes down, goes away. I watch it happen. In my brain, if the sun is gone, the sky should be dark.

Instead, we are left with the most beautiful light of all.