Santa Monica Sunset and Sweet William

It’s interesting that many of the chapters of my novella, Sweet William, were poems first.  This is one that I’d like to share.

This scene from Sweet William came about on a trip my husband and I took to Santa Monica.  We went there to take a friend to the beach who had never seen the Pacific Ocean.  We got there just before sunset on a warm weekend day.  It seemed as though everyone was out enjoying the end of day.  It had been a long time since I’d been to Santa Monica and I was captured by the people and the atmosphere of exuberance from so many different walks of life mixed together with Sunshine.  

We walked to the end of the pier not knowing we would find bleachers set up for people to sit and watch the sunset.  This experience became a poem and the poem became part of a chapter in Sweet William.  

Santa Monica Sunset

Something about the ocean

brings people together.

A parking lot 

filled with cars.

The day is closing,

people are leaving

toting umbrellas, picnic baskets

and children covered with sand.

One little boy is high footen' it

across the black top with bare feet. 

He pauses for a minute

on a white parking strip

then hurries off again. 

The sun is closing in 

on the horizon

touching many people on the pier

with light and shadow.

There are strolling couples,

families, groups of teenagers

and fishermen with buckets, 

poles slung over their shoulders.

There is the smell of cotton candy

the music from the Marry-go-round

many laughing voices. 

Over the rail

sand becomes ocean waves

where surfers sit gazing

wishes at rising mounds 

passing under them. 

A bate shop,

a restaurant, 

then the end of the pier. 

Fisherman line the railing, 

bleachers face the horizon,

a gallery for gazing.

The sun turns the sky gold

the clouds pink,

then to mauve,

lavender and a dusty red.

There is a reverent quiet

amongst these people

of such diversity.

The brown skinned boy

with a bucket of bait

and bare feet sits next to 

a lady in a silk dress and high heeled shoes

who sits next to a woman

with a baby blanketed against her breast.

All of them watch

the sun sink in the silver sea

and turn the sky magic

then disappear behind

the immense and rolling ocean.

There is a moments silence,

breathing is a sigh.

Everyone claps and cheers

laughs and changes 

back into their ordinary selves 

and moves away into their lives.