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 56 years, the perfect landscape for a love of hiking and playing beach volleyball. Her poetry has appeared in Amethyst Review, Energy Magazine, and One Earth Sangha among other places, and in anthologies including "The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal," "Thin Spaces & Sacred Spaces," and "Women in a Golden State." She is a practicing Reiki Master and teacher who explores ways of healing in articles she writes for wellness magazines in several countries. More of her work can be found on Instagram and Facebook, at www.carolynchiltoncasas.com, and in her newest collection of poetry, “Under the Same Sky.”