the beach at sunset by Eloise Klein Healy The cliff above where we stand is crumbling and up on the Palisades the sidewalks buckle like a broken conveyer belt. Art Deco palm trees sway their hula skirts in perfect unison against a backdrop of gorgeous blue, and for you I would try it, though I have always forbidden myself to write poems about the beach at sunset. All the clichés for it sputter like the first generation of neon, and what attracts me anyway are these four species of gulls we've identified, their bodies turned into the wind, and not one of them aware of their silly beauty. I'm the one awash in pastels and hoping to salvage the day, finally turning away from the last light on the western shore and the steady whoosh of waves driving in, drumming insistently like the undeniable data of the cancer in your breast. We walk back to the car and take the top down for the ride home through the early mist. No matter what else is happening, this is California. You'll have your cancer at freeway speeds. I'll drive and park and drive at park. The hospital when I arrive to visit will be catching the last rays of the sun, glinting like an architectural miracle realized. I realize a miracle is what you need -a grain of sand, a perfect world where you live beyond the facts of what your body has given you as the first taste of death.

the beach at sunset by Eloise Klein Healy The cliff above where we stand is crumbling and up on the Palisades the sidewalks buckle like a broken conveyer belt. Art Deco palm trees sway their hula skirts in perfect unison against a backdrop of gorgeous blue, and for you I would try it, though I have always forbidden myself to write poems about the beach at sunset. All the clichés for it sputter like the first generation of neon, and what attracts me anyway are these four species of gulls we've identified, their bodies turned into the wind, and not one of them aware of their silly beauty. I'm the one awash in pastels and hoping to salvage the day, finally turning away from the last light on the western shore and the steady whoosh of waves driving in, drumming insistently like the undeniable data of the cancer in your breast. We walk back to the car and take the top down for the ride home through the early mist. No matter what else is happening, this is California. You'll have your cancer at freeway speeds. I'll drive and park and drive at park. The hospital when I arrive to visit will be catching the last rays of the sun, glinting like an architectural miracle realized. I realize a miracle is what you need -a grain of sand, a perfect world where you live beyond the facts of what your body has given you as the first taste of death.

Today’s poem for #nationalpoetrymonth
#thebeachatsunset by #EloiseKleinHealy
(my last Golden State poem: SoCal, the coast, and our brief lives)
#NaPoMo #poetry
“a grain of sand, a perfect world

where you live beyond the facts
of what your body has given you”