The Sunset

Last night the sky threw a party.
The clouds were the first to arrive,
dressed in their clean white party frocks.

They mingled around,
politely admiring the decorations
and sipping their drinks

until the sun rushed in,
late as usual and out of breath,
and collided with the drinks table.

Crash! Splash!
Orange cordial and pink lemonade flew everywhere,
drenching the clouds’ white dresses.

Those clouds were furious!
Their cheeks flushed red
and they yelled and yelled at the unfortunate sun.

The sky, always hating a scene,
tried to smooth things over
by bringing out the birthday cake.

They all sang happy birthday,
loudly and slightly out of tune,
as the sun shuffled forward to get a closer look.

But that clumsy sun got tangled in the tablecloth,
knocked the cake over, scattered the candles
and set the tablecloth alight! Grey smoke billowed out.

Embarrassed,
the sun slipped away from the party,
over the horizon and out of sight,

leaving the clouds fuming with anger,
their splattered frocks
smudged with grey.

The sky sighed.
It would try again
tomorrow.

© Kristin Martin 2018

This poem was first published in Orbit, Issue No. 3, The School Magazine, April 2018.  It is also in my poetry book, To Rhyme or Not to Rhyme? (Glimmer Press, 2019).

60 thoughts on “The Sunset

    • Thanks Mia!

      I’m sorry it took me so long to reply to your comment. My notifications are going to my junk mail for some reason, so I didn’t know you’d written two comments.

      Kristin

  1. Hi Kristin,
    The sky is pink and red here where i live! We sometimes go on walk around that time! And it’s true, the sunset kind of does look like a party!

  2. Hi Kristen
    That was a cool poem. It was cool how you said that the sky was the party host and the clouds and sun were invited. Did you know that the sunset lasts for 70-100 minuets.
    From Thinara

  3. Hi Kristin
    I liked how you said that the sky threw a party, but it was really just sunset. This poem was so imaginative and amazing. What inspired you for this poem? I would love to know?

  4. Hi Kristin

    I like how you talked about the orange cordial and pink lemonade flying everywhere like when the clouds turn beautiful colours in the evening. This was my favourite part of the poem because it painted beautiful pictures of a sunset in my mind.
    Thank you 🙂

  5. I can relate to the sun ☀️
    Always being late all ready about to arrive at the party and then realised that I forgot the birthday present racing back home then coming back again and then and arriving 15 minutes late

  6. Hi Kristin
    this is a great poem I liked how you could tell what was going on and it sounded like someone was talking face to face with me and I liked how it was easy to understand all the words because they are simple

  7. This is a great poem. I really liked how the words didn’t rhyme it just sounded like someone was having a conversation to me and you could tell what was going on with the simple language.

  8. Dear Kristin
    I loved your poem because you took a beautiful scene into a beautiful poem. I LOVE your imagination and the amount of description you added. Your poems are amazing.
    Yenuli

  9. I love the personification in this poem and how you described the sunset as the sky throwing a party. The way this piece of poetry is written is really quite beautiful and I would love to hear more poetry like this in the future.

  10. Hi Kristin,

    Yesterday I went to Semaphore beach and stayed till the sun set. I thought the sun was melted by the sea water and I worried whether sun will rise tomorrow. Im wrong. I saw the sun today.

    Thanks

    Dinidu

    • Hi Kristin
      I liked how you said the sky was throwing a party It kind of gave a different perspective towards storms. Isn’t how you wrote this personification?

      Tharusha

  11. Hi Kristin

    This was a very funny poem because the sun usually is the star helping everyone but today it seemed clumsy. It made me laugh quite a lot.

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