Sunset For Now at Naples, Florida
By Andy Fogle
Check, check. All the standard elements
are here: sea-sky horizon, the small-shelled
shore-lip, scattered palms, a happily
zig-zagged pier, a boulder jetty
that works for now. It’s like walking through
a photo album: a father holding
his small daughter, then hands with his wife,
who later chase-stalks her son. The whole
family of four, framed by these tokens
and an aging man’s squint, who is three things
to these four people — father, father-
in-law, grandfather — and his tremor
does not for now. Pan the scene: a group
of twenty-somethings timing their leap
for the camera on a tripod; a man
with a construction company t-shirt
teaches his son to surf; smokers fume
on the wood steps leading from lot to sand;
retirees in lawn chairs with coolers
of boxed wine and cutting boards. In a few years,
some of these kids will be big, some of these
elders ash, and vice versa. They’ve gathered
to witness another day pass. The air
is stable and clear, the light less scattered,
so when the sun slips, they glimpse the green flash,
treasured mirage, and then, for now, they all applaud.
Andy Fogle has five chapbooks of poetry, with poems, translations, memoir, interviews, criticism, and educational research in Mid-American Review, Blackbird, South Dakota Review, Natural Bridge, Reunion: The Dallas Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, English Journal, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. He lives in upstate NY, teaching high school and working on a PhD in Education.
Featured image courtesy Victor Baquero / CC
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