SKEPTICS: The Green Flash

[This is the third of five winners from our second annual Creative Contest. This year's contest theme was "Green." Each winning entry will post on successive days followed by the seven runners-up, so be sure to make daily visits to www.kauaibackstory.com over the next couple weeks.]

by Dawn Kawahara

Sandals sliding along
the sloping mat of grass
toward the curve of sand,
warm, your hand in mine,
salt breeze rumples our hair, chills our skin
as the sun falls out of a winter solstice day--
last of the century.
We do not hurry toward sunset.
The spangled sea splashes foam,
dashes, lays bare
walls of buried sandstone.
High waves launch a steady assault
against the black and jagged cliff
that marks the end of the beach.
Cloud veils sift, the sun bounces once,
rays stabbing the line of cool blue at the western edge,
settles, slims to a narrow disk,
thin
and thinner still--a fiery slice
slipping,
slipped below horizon,
transformed, becomes an emerald prism.
We blink and stare
held by the spell of that slow jeweled wink,
stand vesper still,
then lift our arms, whoop, giddily spin,
splashing along the silver fringe
of the cove’s dusk roll and tumble of velvet purple.
When colors merge to gray on gray
your fingers lace through mine,
leading me home slowly.
As if at a signal
we both glance back toward the darkened portal
of that iridescent green flash
we’ve longed to see
but half-believed as myth
and only, now, perceive as lucid magic
presaging our new millennium gift.