Sunset over Palos Verdes
watching from Signal Hill,
I took a photograph still life
as the fading bright blue sky
became a golden glow
and spilt red over the hills.
Still married
but thinking this is over,
this is it, for us.
So I took my husband to the hill
to watch one last sunset together.
I snapped a study in sunset and silhouettes:
tall black form imitating a spouting oil well
reaching for a lone star
in the deep blue sky above it
as its silhouette hid the sun;
and a rectangle black block beside it
with a square hole imitating a picture frame
that frames nothing
but the empty sky beyond.
In between, the lines and curves
of a concrete bench etched
near my soon to be ex
standing near a stone pedestal.
His one arm rested on stone,
one arm at his hip as he contemplated his fate.
A telescope fades in the shadows
as the sun, invisible behind the sculpture,
hides suspended in mid-setting.
I was not yet resigned to divorce,
he was already resigned to convince me.
As we watched the sun fade into the future,
I captured one last moment of our sunset days.
He looked across the basin between reddened hills,
meditating upon his bipolar future.
I silently watched him from behind,
nostalgic to the end
for the setting of our final days
as an unknown future
stretched before us.
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