Sunday, January 16, 2005

Slant light and gladness in the heart. Warming air. The icicles dissolve. The echo of a big truck moving on the distant highway comes up past the ridge. Silence. A bird--which? I have not heard it before--repeats a single high note many times, and then the song collapses into random happy chittering. A hawk cries once. The sun muscles past the gray. The sky around it is gold-going-to-silver. Cloud shreds glisten and shade, goldwhitesilvergray. The sun burns through it all. My cheek, my shoulder, warm. It reminds me--the light, the angle of it, the silence, the sounds--remind me of something. Childhood Iowa, I think--Lakota, and the utter silences, and then a distant tractor plowing. Or mornings in the fat grass of Southern California--whispers from a far-off freeway, sparrows at bread crumbs, a Sabbath-stillness that might last half a day. It's all in this brightening minute--the light after cloud, the warmth so soon after insufferable cold, the song after tension. 10:10:50 AM    comment []