GUERNSEY WEEK: GRANDES ROCQUES

One of the pleasures of living in Guernsey is the famous sunsets that, on a summer’s evening, can be breathtakingly beautiful.
The west coast beaches of Cobo Bay and Grandes Rocques are perfect vantage points from which to watch the blood-red sun slip down beyond the horizon, and if you’re sitting there on warm sand with a high tide rolling gently, a bundle of fish and chips in your lap and maybe a bottle of wine at your elbow, there’s no better place to be, this side of Heaven.
That said, I think there’s something inherently sad about sunset.  It speaks of me about the ending of things. 
I wrote this rhyming poem with that thought in mind. 

GRANDES ROCQUES

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.