Saying Good Bye to Los Angeles

How often do we who live here in the City of the Angels have to feel that ache when some one we have grown to love comes to the point where their life is taking them in a new direction. They are leaving our city. We know they will remember their days here. This is my farewell to them all. Here is a sunset shot for them looking west from my dental office on Sunset Boulevard.


TO TOAST FAREWELL
In the evening,
In London or in Budapest
Where warm nights rarely hang so still,
And when at dusk
The slipping sun reaches out,
Blood-red behind the wisps of clouds,
The gathering gown,
Deep night settles on
The remnants on another distant day,
You will remember
How the thick orange sky
Sank beneath the silhouette of tall palms,
Where warm sands
Edge out the Pacific's rim
And The City of Angels becomes a memory.


And when gathered
In high-draped halls
At table or beside the fire,
Contented then,
As talking bubbles
With thoughts you love to share,
When practiced tales,
The patch work of experience,
Delights the company with your wisdom,
Will you then
Fill up your glasses
With wine as red as any sky we've known,
And raise a toast
To friends so far away
In places where perhaps you’d rather be?