“It’s crowded. What
are these people staring at?” she said standing on one of the horizontal telephone
poles that marked the line of demarcation between the asphalt and the sand. “There’s
nothing to see.”
“They’re here for the sunset,” he said.
“It’s a cloud,” she said, “There’s nothing to see.”
“It’s like Key West,” he said standing next to her
looking out at the scene before him.
“This is not
Key West.” She said, sick of the sand, the people, and the cloud that was blocking
her vision of the sun.
“No, in Key West the people are piled twenty deep against
a fence.”
“Did you hear that man?” my wife asked me, “Piled against
the fence. Twenty deep.” She was sitting and kicking the broken shells out of
her sandals. My wife and I are taking a belated 25th anniversary trip to Florida and Key West is on our itinerary. We were both close enough to hear their conversation. Of course
hearing their conversation wasn’t all that hard to do.
“Yeah, but did you hear her?” I asked looking out at the
blazing colors that outlined the ‘cloud’ that the woman was so verbally
distraught about. I looked back at where they were standing and they were gone –
retreated to a gift shop or, more likely, their car. I was sure she would be
bemoaning the fact that there were so many people “staring at nothing” far past
her trip to Cape May.
My wife had not heard the woman. They were a middle-aged
couple; I suppose they were about our age but as couples we were obviously
looking at two completely different sunsets. I felt that I had to look again at
the view and see it with eyes that weren’t poisoned by the woman’s freely
offered but never asked for opinions. And so I did.
She missed it. She never saw the colors that exploded
around the edge of the clouds – the shimmering feathers of light that were
painted like bright orange brush strokes against the canvas of the sky. The sparkling
reflection of ambient light on the water so close to where the Atlantic Ocean
meets the Delaware Bay. She missed the magic – the celebration of another day
turning into night. The thing about sunsets is that no two are alike. Each one
is different, unique. Each has its own verse of poetry to whisper in your ear.
You either appreciate that or you don’t. Sunsets are moments in time and
moments are fleeting, they are unique - they are precious.
I thought of the man on their car ride back to wherever
it is they were from and whatever their life together has been thus far. “Poor
bastard,” I said.
“What?” my wife asked.
“Huh? Oh, nothing,” I said and we returned to the sight
before us.
