Sunset Goodbye

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 sculputre,
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 uncertain 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.