Photo by Adel Emma

The legendary green flash is real.
After more than fifty years
living on our coast
and countless sunset viewings,
I finally saw it
as the last slice of ripe tangerine
slipped into
the horizon’s expectant mouth.

I had thought it a tall tale,
much like merpeople
or mythical giant squid
sworn to drag down ships of old.

My friends also saw it.
Leaving the sand
where we’d played our games,
we stopped to watch
the barest visible edge
of sun being swallowed.
High-fiving, we shouted in unison,
It’s real! I saw green, too!

(originally published by The Edge Magazine)

By Carolyn Chilton Casas

Carolyn Chilton Casas has lived on the Central Coast for 55 years, the perfect landscape for a love of hiking and playing beach volleyball. She is a practicing Reiki master and teacher who often explores ways of healing in the articles she writes for energy and wellness magazines in several countries. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including “The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal” and “Thin Places & Sacred Spaces.” More of her work can be found on Facebook or Instagram and in her second collection of poetry, “Under the Same Sky.”