West Coast Sunset - Richard Fleming

When the Fat Lady sings her song
of death, her red dress billows out.
Her stage is the horizon there
beyond the sea where white birds shout
like stage-hands in the cooling air
or, lazy, simply bob along.

Her audience, this perfect night:
beach strollers, men with barbeques,
joggers, dog-walkers, laughing girls,
wet-suited boys in bright canoes;
stare as her aria unfurls
its ruby notes in dying light.

Collectively, we hold our breath
to watch the Lady, red as paint,
sink down, her wondrous final scene
completed in a breathless faint.
The colour now, the tangerine
of saffron robes, perhaps of death.

Richard Fleming

This poem first appeared in The Man Who Landed, as part of A GUERNSEY DOUBLE, a joint collection with poet, Peter Kenny.

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