The Beach at Sunset

By Eloise Klein Healy b. 1943 Eloise Klein Healy

for Colleen

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.

Source: Passing (Red Hen Press, 2002)

Biography

Born in El Paso, Texas, Eloise Klein Healy grew up in rural Iowa. Healy's crisp, image- and narrative-driven poems often explore community, sexuality, and the nature of home. On the radio program Writers on Writing, Healy discussed her work’s attention to “the influence of place on people.” Addressing the role of the open-air California landscape and the details of daily life that often ground her poems, Healy noted, “The way . . .

Continue reading this biography